Everybody Limbo!
by Clare Voyant
Summary: Jo and Ellen don't go to heaven but they don't go to hell either, so just where the heck are they?  Also, where do angels go when they die?  The answer to both questions is a little more complicated than it seems.
1. Prologue

**Everybody Limbo!**

**Author's Note: **This takes place immediately following "Abandon All Hope..." but it also takes place immediately after "Hammer of the Gods" and I know that doesn't make much sense, but you gotta kick that linear thinking for this one. Also, this is just a prologue to kick us off. I'm still writing this story as I post it so feedback is both welcomed and encouraged, though I do prefer more of the "You suck because x, y, and z" variety rather than the blanket "You suck!" statements. That said, let's get started.

* * *

><p>Prologue<p>

At first there's nothing, in every sense of the word. Jo remembers the feel of her mother's arm wrapped around her shoulders. She can remember her mother's voice, already distant and echoing like she's talking to her from another room saying, "I'll always love you, baby." And then there's nothing. Those memories slip away like water straining through fingers.

Jo feels like she's floating for awhile, aimless and unrestrained by things like gravity and flesh and bone. Floating and floating and floating, and then she's falling, but what she's falling into she can't see, because she can't see anything. It's not dark, it's not light, it's not anything. Joanna Beth Harvelle falls and falls and falls. Maybe she falls forever? It's boring as hell.

She doesn't so much land as stop falling. One minute there's nothing underneath her but more nothing and the then she's lying on something soft and springy. _This is good_, Jo thinks, _at least there's something now_. She feels different too, different than when she'd been floating or falling. She feels more whole, solid. Solid is good. Solid means she can start finding out what the hell is going on.


	2. Chapter 1: Grey Sky Mourning

**Everybody Limbo!**

Disclaimer: I don't own these chess pieces, I just like to move them around on the board and make up my own rules. Everything you recognise belongs to the network, Kripke, and the team of hard-working people who make Supernatural possible.

Rating: Rated M, for mature. Why? Because I fucking said so.

Author's notes ahead. Give them a scan, if you want some idea of what's going on.

**Author's Note: **Despite knowing where I want it to go, I have no idea how long this story is going to be. This chapter was surprising to write because I kept finding that the characters wanted to stop and talk a whole lot more than I expected. Exposition being an unavoidable but very necessary evil, I hope this tendency will wane as we go on. Also, reviews are amazing. Negative reviews are better than no reviews and good reviews are like chapter-writing Wheaties; they fuel the creation!

**Author's Note 2: **Unless you're especially interested in World War Two Pacific-theatre war criminals, there may come a point in this chapter where you go, "Who the hell is that?" Bear with me; there will be a biographical note at the end for those that are interested. If you're not interested, don't worry, it won't destroy your comprehension of the rest of the story if you write it off. Now, on with the show!

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><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

**Grey Sky Mourning**

* * *

><p>Jo reaches out, her fingers ghosting over soft, springy threads of something. She curls her fingers around the strands, pulling softly, finding only the barest amount of give. She inhales and the air flows into her lungs easy and clean, but there's no smell to it.<p>

Opening her eyes, a canvas of blank grey greets her. She blinks and opens her eyes again. Still grey. She shuts her eyes, squeezes them closed until she can see bright spots dancing on the backs of her eyelids and then she opens them again. Still grey.

Slowly, carefully because she remembers that she has just been practically ripped in half by a hellhound, Jo sits up, her view shifting until the blank grey she was looking at is overtaken by even more grey.

Jo is sitting in a field of grass—what can only reasonably be called a meadow—surrounded by a forest of trees behind her and up ahead opening to a steep embankment down towards a body of water, what looks like it could be a river. What's more, all of it is grey. The trees, the grass, the water, even the damn _sky_ is grey. It's like someone dumped her into the middle of an old black-and-white episode of Lassie.

"What the…" Jo trails off. Her voice sounds strange, echoey like her mother's voice had been. It was sort of like listening to _herself_ talk from another room. "What the _hell_?"

Jo stands, brushing off bits of grey grass from her grey jeans with her grey hands. She moves those hands to the hem of her grey tee-shirt, hesitating, and then pulling the shirt up a little, rubbing fingers against her abdomen where she can remember the hellhound tearing into her flesh. There's nothing there now but undamaged skin, like nothing had ever happened. There's no pain, either. Not even the dull ache of remembered pain.

The second thing she does is check to make sure that she still has her father's iron knife on her. When she finds it tucked away in the same place it always is, Jo breathes a sigh of relief at not being left completely defenceless. Somewhat reassured, she begins to evaluate her surroundings with the hope of finding answers.

The meadow isn't exactly sunny because the word 'sunny' brings to mind things like 'warm' and 'clear' and 'cheery' and this place is none of those things.

It is bright though, like how it would be if the sun shined the brightest shade of grey imaginable. Besides being bright it's also hazy. Not the heavy haze of fog, because the air isn't cold enough for that. It's more like someone smeared Vaseline over the edges of the world. Jo hopes that doesn't mean she has brain damage or something. Though, it might explain the whole lack-of-colour thing.

She stands there in the not-sunny meadow for a few minutes, turning her head one way towards the forest and then the other way towards the river, trying to decide. Left or right? Forest or river? Which way to go?

Jo walks forward, stopping once she reaches the top of the dirt embankment that eases down to the river's shore. The embankment is broken up by outcroppings of rocks and the twisted gnarls of old tree roots. The leaves on the trees rustle as a gentle breeze rolls through the meadow and caresses against her cheek. Instead of being refreshing or comforting, it just feels like air moving for the sake of moving.

She figures that she can probably scale the embankment safely enough using the rocks and roots to hike a path down to the shore, but looking out at the river she sees nothing but water. There's no shore on the other side and if she craned her head up and down the length of the river, there was nothing to see but more water stretching on to both horizons.

Deciding that a butt-ton of water isn't going to help her figure anything out, she turns back towards the trees at the other edge of the meadow. She is just about to head through a break in the forest when she hears something, far off and muted but steadily becoming more and more insistent.

_mmmmmmmmnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaa_, the sound buzzes, low but slowly growing stronger. She walks back into the centre of the meadow where the sound is the clearest.

_aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA_, it continues, still growing louder. Jo turns in a slow circle, looking for the source.

The sound reaches its peak, calling her attention to the sky above her head.

"_AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH_!"

Something bright and colourless streaks out of the dull grey sky, falling _fast,_ and Jo has only enough time to take a giant leap backwards before it slams into the grass at her feet.

When the shock wares off from nearly being crushed by something falling cartoon-style out of the sky, she tentatively looks the thing over. There's dark hair and shoulders and a body attached to them and Jo dimly realises that it's a person, a man more specifically, lying face down in the middle of the meadow.

"Mmmmnnnnuuuuuhhhh," the man moans, muffled by the grass.

Jo is surprised to hear him make any sound at all. At the velocity he'd been travelling, it's a miracle he isn't a slick goo of man-soup on the grass.

She takes a step towards him, cautious because, hey, even if this guy just face-planted into the middle of a field like he'd gone parachuting without the whole parachute part, she's still going to be on her guard.

"You okay?" Her tone is the verbal equivalent of prodding him with a stick.

The guy rolls over onto his back, his eyes scrunched shut and his narrow face contorted in discomfort. "Gaaaaahhhh," he moans again. Even despite his distorted expression, she doesn't recognise him as anyone she's ever seen before.

He's dressed casually in a light-ish canvas motorcycle jacket, a pair of dark jeans, and a dark button down shirt with the first three buttons undone, leaving a bit of his chest exposed. He's also just as grey as everything else.

"Hey, are you okay?" She kicks out towards his side with the edge of her boot to lightly prod him with more than just words.

A pair of grey eyes snap open to stare up, past her, to the sky.

"I dunno," the guy answers, his voice hoarse but oddly conversational, his small mouth quirked in a contemplative frown. His head follows the slant of his frown as he studies the sky. "Is everything supposed to be that colour?"

Jo lifts both hands and drops them to her sides helplessly. "You tell me."

Slowly, because that seems to be the word of the day, the guy sits up and runs a hand through his hair, pushing back stands away from his face and behind his ears. He looks around the meadow, taking it all in as he cautiously climbs to his feet, standing not terribly taller than herself, towering all of maybe three inches above her.

His gaze shifts from their surroundings to Jo, giving her such a thorough leer from the ends of her boot-laces to the top of her head that she thinks she might need a shower when he's done.

"What're you?" he asks.

Jo frowns, taken aback by the question. "What _am_ I?"

"Yeah, human, angel, demon, none of the above… _All_ of the above? Wouldn't that be something," he muses, almost to himself.

"Uh… human," she responds, but it comes out almost as a question. Stating that simple fact makes her feel uncertain and strange.

"Really?" he clips, looking at her carefully. "'Cause you don't sound too sure of yourself there, Princess."

"Jo."

"Nah," he shakes his head, "that's not my name."

"That's _my_ name," she says, gritting her teeth. How is it possible to be instantly irritated by someone? "It's _Jo_, not 'Princess'."

"_Jo_," he says, as if tasting the name in his mouth. "Jo, Jo, Jo. Short for…?"

All of her mother's old lectures to about talking to strangers suddenly come to mind. That's why when she opens her mouth, 'Josephine' tumbles out instead of Joanna Beth.

"Uh-_huh_," he says, giving her a shrewd look, almost like he doesn't quite believe her. He doesn't call her on though and then he's on to a different expression, this one light and cheerful.

"Well, Josie," she winces at the nickname and grumbles "Jo," as a correction, but he doesn't seem to pay any attention as he sweeps past her, turning in a slow circle like a showman at the circus and announcing, "_I_… am Gabriel."

She shrugs. "Alright."

He waits, eyebrows arched expectantly, but before long disappointment soaks into his expression as it becomes clear that she wasn't awed by him at all.

"_Gabriel_?" he repeats, as if saying it with more emphasis will induce the desired effect.

"Ok." She shrugs again, uncomfortably offering, "Hi?"

"Ugh!" He lets out a grunt of disgust, shaking his head. "Don't they teach you humans anything anymore?"

He begins to pace, cutting a small path back and forth in the grass, like a lion she once saw in a zoo when she was seven.

"You know," he declares wistfully, wagging a finger at her, "there was a time—mind you, we're talking the early days before Jesus became one with the wood—when I could come down to Earth, say my name in front of a crowd of _thousands_ and have garlands thrown at my feet!"

"Yeah, well, I guess garlands are so twenty centuries ago," she deadpans.

Jo contemplates leaving him here and going off into the forest as had been her original plan. It's obvious she's not going to get any answers from crazy, pacing guy.

"Listen…uh…" She draws a blank.

"_Gabriel_," he supplies with exasperation, his expression aghast as he stops pacing to face her. "The _archangel_? Ringing any bells?"

Jo doesn't even try to keep her blatant scepticism from showing. "_You're_ an angel?"

"Don't look so surprised, Princess," he simpers.

"_Jo_." She again corrects through clinched teeth.

"Josie," he amends with a long-suffering sigh, as if he's making a big compromise.

In an instant the smirk is back. "Sometimes big things come in deceptively compact packages," Gabriel says, leering at her again.

Jo executes an exaggerated gag, rolling her eyes in response. He just shrugs, smirk still in place.

"Well," he says brightly, clapping his hands together, "this has been a blast, Kiddo. Really, it has, but I've gotta get going. You know, things to see, people to do." He raises his right hand, thumb and middle finger poised, "Bye now!"

He snaps.

Nothing happens.

Gabriel frowns, snaps again.

Again, nothing happens.

Jo folds her arms across her chest and levels an amused smirk of her own at his building befuddlement.

"Huh," he frowns, examining his fingers and then doing a more critical sweep of their dull, grey surroundings. "Well _that's_ not good."

* * *

><p>"Would you-" He stumbles over a bit of exposed tree root, jogging forward a little to stay on his feet. "Would you <em>slow down<em>?"

"No," she replies over her shoulder, cutting through the grey foliage a few paces ahead of him with a determined stride. By her figuring they've been walking through the forest for about ten minutes and Gabriel has spent the entire time complaining. "No one said you had to come with me. If you don't like it, feel free to go back"

"Oh and what? Wait around in Bambi-land until the end of time?" He scoffs, "No thanks."

"Then either shut up or walk faster," she says, offering, "Gold star if you can do both."

"In case it has escaped your notice, Sweet Cheeks," he stops, tossing an aggravated look at her back, "we don't need to run anywhere. You know why? 'Cause there's_ nobody chasing us_!"

Jo pauses and turns back to him, her jaw set tight with irritation. "That's not the point. We need to keep going."

Gabriel lets out a derisive chuckle, his arms flailing out wide as he gives her a pointed look. "_Where_?"

Her entire expression reads as intense irritation as she crossed her arms over her chest and scowls. It's obvious that she doesn't have an answer.

"Look," he continues, voice slightly condescending, "we ain't on our way to Grandma's house, here. I _told_ you, we're stuck in Limbo. There is _literally_ nowhere to go. _This_?" he motions to the forest around them, "Is all there is."

"I don't buy it." Jo says, shaking her head. Turning around, she resumes walking.

"And I'm not selling," he replies, following along behind her—albeit at a slower pace. "That's just the way it is, Jo-Jo."

"Don't call me that."

Gabriel's lips quirk at her irritation. He was going to enjoy pushing her buttons. "Are you always this pleasant or is this a recent development since being dead?"

"I'm not dead."

"Oh, no?" he laughs, picking up his pace a little to come up even with her, smirking at her stony expression. "Tell me then, Cupcake, what's the last thing you remember before this place? Hmm?"

After a moment of contemplation her stride falters and she stares off into the woods for a moment, absorbed in thought. Things are still a little fuzzy and disjointed in her mind, but she can remember her mother's arm around her at some point and pain and cold and then…then…there's nothing after that.

She glances over to Gabriel who's grinning at her like the Cheshire Cat.

"Shut up," she snaps and starts walking again.

"_I told you_," he intones, following after her.

"I'm _not_ dead."

"Oh, yes you are. _You_," he coos, reaching out with his index finger and swiping at her nose, making her recoil and bat his hand away from her face, "my _angry _little Spitfire, have all the vitality of a box of rocks."

"Okay," she says resignedly, stopping abruptly and forcing him to jerk to a halt beside her. "If I really am dead then what the hell am I doing here? Shouldn't I be in Heaven? I led a pretty good life. I mean, Jesus, I killed fucking _evil_ for a living!"

"Maybe it was all that profanity and blaspheming?" Gabriel suggests, casually studying his fingernails.

Jo lets out a suppressed grumbled of irritation and fights the urge to pull her hair out. Instead she stops away without so much as a backwards glance to him.

She doesn't really care if he follows her or not.

* * *

><p>"<em>All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey<em>," Gabriel sings, badly and off-key. "_I've been for a waaaalk, on a winter's day_." He repeats 'on a winter's day,' almost under his breath, imitating background singers.

They've been walking for over an hour or so and to Jo's utter amazement and horror Gabriel only gets more annoying the more time you spend with him, not less.

"Please stop."

"_I'd be safe and warm, if I was in L.A._," he continues singing, as if she had never said anything. "_California dreamin_', _on such a winter's daaaaaaayyyyy_!"

"_Please_," she begs. It's not a very becoming thing to do and it makes her feel a little stupid, but she's getting desperate.

Then Gabriel does the unimaginable and stops singing. She waits all of a minute before starting to thank deities and saints but—wouldn't you know it—without warning he roars into the next verse, proving that he was only lulling her into a false sense of security. The bastard.

"_Stopped into a church_," He starts to snap the tune out with his fingers, "_I passed along the way."_

"No," she groans. "Make it stop!"

Jo picks up her pace, hoping to put some distance between them, but he keeps up with steady determination, singing at her as she grinds her teeth together and stomps over innocent plant-life like it has wronged her in some profound way.

"_Well, I got down on my __**knees**__," _he practically wails at the side of her very un-amused face, "_and I pretend to pray_."

"I will give you anything to stop," is her heartfelt promise.

"You don't have anything," he replies, grinning sweetly at her. "Y_ou know the preacher likes the cold_."

"Kill me," Jo pleads, crushing a grey daisy under her boot.

"You're already dead, Muffin," Gabriel casually reminds. "_He knows I'm gonna stay._ _California dreamin', on such a winter's daaaaaaaay_!"

* * *

><p>She expects the water to be cool, wants it to be, but it's not.<p>

Jo guesses they've been hiking for about three hours now and she's starting to feel a little hot and slightly sticky. It had been a pleasant surprise stumbling across the little stream cradled in a shallow valley in the forest and when she'd signalled that they were stopping for a rest here, she imagined how nice it would feel to dip her hands into the cool water before pressing her wet fingers against the back of her neck.

But the water in the stream isn't cold. It isn't warm either. It's tepid, just like the air. Just like everything else here.

She wants to grumble about that but a glance over at Gabriel—lounging on a rock, head thrown back like he's a sunbather in Maui, apparently not a care in the world—is enough to convince her to keep her mouth shut. Talking might encourage him to talk back and she's still basking in the wonderful treasure that is 'silence' in Gabriel's presence. When the guy got going, he really could not shut up.

But he had fallen quiet awhile ago after seeming to have run through an entire set-list of classic '70s folk songs, weaving his off-key rendition of "California Dreamin'" with "Going Up the Country," which had then morphed into "A Whiter Shade of Pale," that segued into "Brown Eyed Girl." He had dropped off mid-way through "American Pie," somewhere around the verse about the jester stealing the King's thorny crown when the King wasn't paying attention, his mood turning unexpectedly melancholy.

Jo flicks water off her hands and stands on the bank of the stream, drying her fingers on her jeans before easing herself down beneath a tree across from Gabriel's rock. He still has his head thrown back, legs crossed at the ankles, arms braced out behind him, ignoring her.

She should've known that her luck wasn't going to last.

"You know," he says conversationally and totally out of the blue, like it has only been minutes and not nearly an hour since he last opened his mouth, "streams were my idea."

"What the hell are you talking about?" she wearily sighs, digging a small hole in the grey dirt with the heel of her boot.

"Streams. You know, a little bit of water running over shallow… _you_ know," he gesturs vaguely towards the water, "_that_. My idea."

Jo is understandably sceptical. "_You_ thought up streams?"

"Yep." A nostalgic grin slides into place even as his words turn a little caustic. "Sure, Dad thought up the vast oceans and mighty rivers and deep lakes for you upright monkeys, but I said let there be babbling brooks and lapping tributaries and yea, verily it was so."

"So you're sticking with the whole angel-thing then?"

"_Arch_angel-thing," he automatically corrects, head still thrown back like he's checking the sky for cracks. "And yes."

"What's the difference?"

"Sorry?"

"What is the difference?" She says more slowly this time, making him drop his gaze to her. "I mean," she continues, shrugging, "say I believe you—and I'm not saying I do—but what's the difference? Angel, archangel; aren't they basically the same?"

Gabriel sputters, sitting up on his rock, eyes squinting at her in disapproval and what she thinks might be offence. "The _same_? That's like saying there's no difference between a four star general and the guy who licks the spark plugs in the motor pool."

"Spark plugs?"

"Okay," he sighs, hands coming up to illustrate as he talks. "Intro to Angels 101: all archangels are angels but not all angels are archangels, kay? There's an order to things. First you have your archangels, like me, at the top of the pile. God created us first and then he created all the lower castes of angels—watchers, cherubim, virtues, etc.—and organised them into legions for us to command."

"Like an army," Jo says, contemplative.

"Exactly."

"And you were a general."

"Yep."

"But you're…" A lot of words spring to mind: loud, obnoxious, ridiculous, childish, even the twisting, vaguely mean adjective she feels just a little guilty for thinking…_short_.

"What," he smirks, standing up off his rock and stretching his arms over his head, "devastatingly handsome? Yes, I know."

He looks down at her like he knows all about the less-than-kind adjectives swirling around in her head, but he doesn't look particularly wounded or upset, just amused. For some reason that irritates her.

She grits her teeth. "That's not what I-"

"Don't let the outside fool ya, Kid," he says, cutting her off with a wink. "What you're seeing is just the frosting."

She squints up at him, her gaze assessing. "Meaning?"

"This," he says, casually tapping his chest as he smiles down at her, "is just my vessel. My true form is so powerful that if I went walking around out there in my birthday suit, I'd go frying people's eyes right outta their heads. People tend not to dig the whole permanent blindness thing so much, so I threw on this old thing back in the day."

Jo worries on her lower lip and tries to think of a way to phrase what she wants to ask without it coming off the wrong way. "But why-"

"Why am I not Brad Pitt?" he guesses. "Why all the _phenomenal cosmic power_ shoved inside the itty-bitty dorky guy?"

"Well… Yeah."

"We're not like demons," he explains with surprising patience. "We can't just beam down here and hop in any ride we want. It's kinda like online dating, all the stats have to match up."

"So you and this guy," she waves a hand at Gabriel, "you guys clicked or whatever?"

"Something like that," Gabriel replies, his tone vague and evasive in a way that makes Jo suspect that there's more to the story than that.

Before she can press him about it though another thought occurs to her.

"If you're an _arch_angel-"

"Not that you believe me or anything," he teases.

Her nod is dismissive. "Right, but, if you're an archangel, what are you doing here? Don't you have better places to be?"

"Oh, sister, you have no idea," he smirks.

Jo just stares at him and after a moment he rolls his eyes and relents. "You want the long or the abridged version?"

She flaps a hand at their surroundings pointedly, as if to say that there isn't a whole lot else going on at the moment. "Long version."

Gabriel simply shrugs, "No idea."

Jo blinks at him. "What the hell was the short version?"

"There wasn't a shrug."

"That's bullshit."

"I don't know what you want me to tell ya, Pancake," he sighs. "All's I know is one minute I'm getting shanked by my big bro like I'm an extra on "OZ" and the next I'm doing a Wily E. Coyote into God's grey Earth."

"You were stabbed by your brother?"

"_Right here_!" he cries dramatically, pulling the open collar of his shirt down to show off the skin over his heart, grumbling, "The cumwad."

"You two sound close."

"Yeah, note to self, don't call Lucifer a great big bag of dicks again," he carpes. "Makes him a little stab-y."

The names sent a jolt through her. "Lucifer?" The context of her last few minutes on Earth slowly begins seep into her memory, like those minutes were becoming unstuck behind some invisible barrier somewhere in her mind.

"Yep," he confirms, oblivious to her growing distress, "my big brother Luci. Let's just say absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder, it makes it grow bitchier. Dude's totally lost it. I mean, he was never all that stable to begin with but _now_? It's like he's cranked the crazy all the way up to eleven and snapped the knob off for kicks!"

"When did this happen?" She demands, a little breathless over the memory of her own death.

"The knob snapping?"

"_Lucifer_," Jo presses, insistent. "When did he stab you? What was the date?"

"I dunno," he shrugs, slightly defensive under her scrutiny. "I don't really pay all that much attention to time the way you hairless apes do. It was… July, I think? Why?"

"I died in April," she replies softly, her voice choked as she looks down at her hands fisting themselves into her lap.

Gabriel, mistaking her sudden sadness with just coming to terms with the whole being dead thing, eases himself back down onto the rock, his expression sympathetic. "Listen, I know this must be hard-"

"I died trying to help Sam and Dean Winchester kill him," she interrupts, and when she lifts her sober gaze to meet his astonished one, her eyes are glassy with unshed tears.

"I was hurt and I wasn't going anywhere so I…I stayed behind to hold off a pack of hellhounds. I wanted to give them a head start so they could go put a bullet in that son of a bitch."

Gabriel stares at her in shocked silence.

She laughs but the sound was like a sob and her tears begin to flow freely, even though she tried to hold them in. "Guess they didn't make it," she breathes ruefully, plucking at a loose thread on the hem of her shirt, turning her head away.

There's a moment of silence before he reacts and when he does even he's a little stunned by the gentleness with which he approaches her. She's a tough kid, he can see that, but this whole thing was confusing enough for _him_ let alone some poor girl the Winchesters had somehow talked into playing 'look over here!' with the Devil.

Gabriel slides down off the rock so he's sitting cross-legged on the ground across from her. He's close enough to reach out but he doesn't. He sits at a safe distance, like she's a rabid animal he's trying to keep calm.

"Last I saw them they were still alive." He tells her. An uncertain look crosses his face and he's forced to admit, "Alright, so they were kinda stuck between a rock and, well, _Satan_, but I'm sure they made it out. If you know Sam and Dean, you know they're like cockroaches…or Cher."

It doesn't elicit the slow smile he'd been hoping for, so he decides to stick with serious for now. He can do serious. He may have been a little out of practice, but he can do it.

"So," he says awkwardly, trying to be conversational because that seems to be the safest way to go, "you were helping Sam and Dean? You in the hunting business, then?"

Jo opens her mouth to tell him the usual story. 'No, my Dad was. I just help out.' But she stops. She's dead. _Dead_. There's no more life to live. She's never going to get to do anything more than what she's already done with her relatively short time on Earth.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I was."

He nods. "I can see that. You seem like one of those tough, Buffy-type chicks. That's pretty cool," he offers brightly, wincing a little. What was that, all of _ten seconds_ of seriousness? He really had a problem.

But that slow smile he'd been hoping for earlier blooms across her face. It's sweet and small and it feels like an accomplishment.

"Yeah," she agrees. "It was pretty cool."

They lapse into silence, just sitting quietly together for a while, until Jo digs her boot a little deeper in the grey dirt and softly asks, "So, what about you? Are you…dead?"

"I…_think_ so," he slowly asserts. "I've never really been dead before so it's kinda hard to make a comparison."

"Is that even possible?" She asks. "Can archangels die?"

"Oh, sure. It's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off, but it's possible. Getting tagged by the Devil's probably a safe bet."

"And when you die, you come here? To Limbo, I mean."

Gabriel shakes his head.

"Nah, see, that's were things go a little fruit-loops," he says. "If you do manage to gank yourself an angel, they don't go to Heaven. That'd be a little redundant, right? I'm not too sure on the specifics, but we were always told that you go to the void."

"The void."

"Think…the absence of everything. The opposite of creation." He motions at the forest around them, "Basically this, but without all the fun scenery and consciousness of being."

"Sounds like fun."

"Oh yeah," he replies with deadpan seriousness. "It's a laugh a minute."

The truth is, the concept of the void has always sort of scared the crap out of him. If he was here instead of there, he wasn't too sure he wanted to go prodding at all the how's and why's of it. Sometimes you just say 'thank you' and forget it.

"So, if you're supposed to be in this void thing, how'd you end up…"

"No idea, remember?"

"Right."

"But I do know one thing," he says, offering her a small grin of sympathy. "Sweet little thing like you? You don't belong here. The power steering might be on the fritz, but I've still got enough mojo working to see inside your glowing little soul, Kid, and you're a snowflake."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Despite sounding vaguely complimentary, she isn't sure she likes the sound of that. For one thing, most people don't call girls with knife collections 'sweet.'

"You're a pure soul, Kid. One of the few I've seen in my vast, incredibly lengthy experience. Though, to be fair, my job's had me kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel most of the time."

"You can see inside my soul?" That thought kind of freaks her out a little.

"Sure," he chirps brightly, pointing at her middle. "Right there, deep inside, you're all lit up like a roman candle, Sugarplum."

"What else can you do?"

"I can whistle the 1812 Overture backwards," he boasts proudly, demonstrating by pursing his lips together and making some slurping noises. When he only receives an un-amused arch of her eyebrow, he grins broadly at her. "Nah, I'm just fucking with you."

"I meant some kind angel powers or something?"

"Of course I do," he replies, eyes glittering brightly. "You know Superman, Spiderman, Captain America? Those guys? Lightweights. Me? I'm a powerhouse of… well, power."

"If you're so powerful then why don't you just zap yourself out of here?"

"Already tried that," His happy expression twists in frustration. "Something's messing with my juice. Looks like I can't just snap myself outta this one."

"Back in the clearing earlier," she says with slow dawning realisation, "that's what you were trying to do? You just, what, snap your fingers and get whatever you want?"

"Yeah, basically," he confirms, wagging his eyebrows at her. "Cool, innit?"

Jo ignores Gabriel's obvious enthusiasm for himself. "But you can't do it now."

He snaps his fingers, as if testing it out. When nothing happens, he shrugs. "Guess not."

"And you're not worried about that at all?" she demands. "Don't you want answers? Don't you want to know why you're here?"

"Creampuff, I don't even know how _here_ is here. This place isn't even supposed to _exist_ anymore."

"It's not?"

"_Limbo_?" He scoffs, as if even the very notion of the place is absurd. "C'mon, that's strictly Old Testament material. Let's just say that when the revision notes for the world came down, this place was supposed to be liquidated. No more Limbo. A soul dies, it goes up or it goes down; do not pass go, do _not_ collect two-hundred dollars."

"So, what, this place is like some kind of giant bureaucratic goof?"

"Heaven doesn't just _make_ mistakes," he objects, shaking his head. "No. _This_? This is something else," he says with certainty. "Somebody did this."

"Yeah, well, don't you wanna know _who_?"

"Yeah, not really."

"How can you be like that?"

"News flash, Little Duck," he says sternly. "I went up against Lucifer and ended up like shish-kabob, but look at me now! I'm not in the void and that, as far as I'm concerned, is enough for me to call this one a win. Ever hear the phrase 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth'?"

"Yeah," she counters with jeering causticity, "and I know another one; 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts.' Guess what, that one has a horse, too." Jo shakes her head, "This feels like a trap."

Gabriel laughs with disbelief. "For _who_?"

"_I don't know_!" she shouts back, her hands clinching themselves into fists. "Maybe if you weren't completely _useless_ we'd have some idea!"

There's a beat of silence and then Gabriel lets out a heavy sigh and reclines back on his arms, much like he'd done on the rock before. Only now he doesn't look like a relaxing sunbather, he looks tense and uncomfortable. It isn't a good look on him.

Jo forces herself to calm down, to take deep, slow, even breaths of unscented air as she loosens the knot of her fingers against her palms. Screaming at powerless archangels isn't going to help anything, even if it does make her feel just a little better for the split second she's doing it.

"I'm sorry," she offers with honest regret.

He casually waves away the apology, but there's none of the usual jocular mirth in his voice when he tells her, "Don't worry about it."

"No," she protests, shaking her head, "that was…That wasn't fair. I didn't mean…I'm just tired, I guess."

"Hey, death's no picnic, Kiddo," he admits. "Takes a little getting used to, I guess."

Jo nods slightly, sighing, "I just wish my mom was here."

She thinks over her words and something inside her tugs at her memory. "She could be," Jo announces after a quiet moment.

Gabriel doesn't follow. "Who could be what?"

"My mom," Jo says. "She could be here."

"Is she dead?"

"I…" Jo tries to think, tries to remember. "I dunno. I don't really remember what happened. She wanted to stay, I think."

She closes her eyes and tries to picture the store where she'd spent her last minutes alive. She tries to retrace everything that had happened.

"We rigged up this thing… This giant bomb. I was going to wait for the hellhounds to come inside and then blow us all to hell, but I… I couldn't _move_. I couldn't get up to open the doors and let them in and Mom…she stayed. She stayed with me. She said she wasn't going to leave me."

Jo reaches out, touching her right shoulder and she can almost feel the press of her mother's arm at her side, holding her.

"She put her arm around me. She told me that she loved me and then…" Jo shakes her head, tears stinging at her eyes again. "I tried to tell her that I loved her back but I… I was floating away. I don't know what happened after that. I don't even know if she's okay."

"Sorry to say it kid," Gabriel sighs, his tone sympathetic even if his words seem insensitive,"but I don't think your mom's chances were all that great."

"Yeah."

"Look on the bright side though," he points out, "that means she could be bumming around this place, same as us."

After a moment thinking about that, Jo shakes her head, wondering, "Do I totally suck for hoping that she's not?"

Gabriel cocks his head and makes a slow show of considering. "Well, not _totally_."

"If anyone deserves to go to heaven, it's my mom, but if she _is_ here, I need to find her. Either way, we need find a way out of this place."

"Whoa, wait a minute there, Sunshine-"

"You said it yourself, I don't belong here."

"Yeah, but-"

"And neither do you," Jo adds. "So, are you going to help me or what?"

Gabriel leers at her with a mischievous smirk. "What's in it for me?"

Jo stares at him hard, offering, "I won't beat you until my hands go numb."

"Hmm," he considers. "As sexy as _that_ sounds, I'm think I'm gonna to have to ask for a little more incentive."

"You know what," she says, suddenly standing in one smooth motion and turning as if to leave. "I don't even know why I'm asking you. I don't need your help."

"No, but you want it," he calls after her knowingly. His smile widens when she stops, her tense back turned to him but the slight tilt of her head telling him that she's at least still listening.

"Don't get me wrong," he says, coming to his feet and wandering over until he's standing at her back, practically talking in her ear, "You _can_ do this all by yourself, but it sure would be nice to have some help, wouldn't it?"

She exhales in an irritated huff, "I'm not about to beg you or anything."

"No?"

"No. You'll either help me or you won't."

There's a long stretch of silence so heavy that Jo feels sure he's going to say no.

"Fine," he says, letting out a heavy sigh that blows through a few strands of her hair. "But I'm not in this to unmask the Scooby-Do villain, here. I'm only tagging along to help you play 'Are you my mother?' After that, we go our separate ways, Kid. Got it?"

"Trust me," she scoffs,"I'm _more_ than okay with that."

Gabriel's hand descends over her head, giving her two quick, affectionate pats, like she's a damn dog or something. "We'll see."

Stepping back and out of her personal space, he claps his hands together and declares with a bright smile, "Well, shall we continue this little Bataan Death March to nowhere?"

"Depends," Jo replies, hiking up out of the valley they've been resting in, "do you think you can be quiet for more than five minutes so I don't end up killing you?"

"As if you could, Pumpkin," he scoffs, following after her, planting himself at her side and his hands at his hips. "And frankly, I'm a little insulted that you think I have so little self control. I can be quiet. You know I once infiltrated an entire legion of Han dynasty-"

"Gabriel."

"Yeah?"

"Quiet," she reminds.

"Okay, I'm done. Starting… Mmm, now."

They take all of twenty steps before he starts talking again.

"You know," he muses, "I strapped Masanobu Tsuji to a treadmill in Laos back in the '60s. Made it 72 miles on the incline before he cried 'Ojisan'…that's Japanese for 'uncle,' by the way." Gabriel shrugs but there's an edge of pride in his voice, "I thought it was pretty poetic."

"Who's Masanobu Tsuji?"

Gabriel grins tightly and shakes his head. "Just some dead guy."

Jo spends the next thirty minutes pondering that in blissful silence, after which Gabriel launches into a debate with himself on the merits of snickers versus mars bars and she starts daydreaming about taking off her right boot and strangling him with the laces. It's going to be a long day.

* * *

><p>Gabriel is not a happy camper. His wings aren't completely clipped, he knows that much. He can still feel the subtle, unique hum of his Grace deep inside, steady and reassuring, letting him know that he's still a BAMF Angel of the Lord, bitches! He can still see the glowing, swirling light of his travelling companion's achingly pure soul, but he can't do much more than that.<p>

There are any number of things that could make their little trek through this black-and-white photo world a hell of a lot more interesting and he can't do any of them. He can't read her mind, or snap his fingers and make candy appear. He can't zap himself to the end of this little story and live the thing backwards, just for the hell of it, and he can't twist and pull the fabric of reality around them to form something more to his liking. He's taken to randomly snapping his fingers together at odd intervals just to see if he's regained his abilities at any point, despite the fact that he would know the instant it happened.

Surprisingly, the worst part of it—not that he would ever admit it out loud or anything—is being completely cut off from heaven for the first time in…well, _ever_. Sure, he's been in witness protection for a few thousand years, but that doesn't mean he has stayed totally out of the loop about things going on upstairs.

Over the years he'd developed the habit of tapping into 'Angel Radio' now and again, just to stay up on current events and definitely not for some sappy reason like falling asleep to the sound of his stupid brothers' chatter, safe in the knowledge that they couldn't trace him back through it. He'd become used to the background noise, as steady and reassuring as the hum of his own Grace, and now there was just nothing. Nothing and, on top of it, no candy. Frankly, it sucked major flying angel dick and Josie needed to _know_.

"Have I mentioned this sucks."

"So you've said. A lot."

His assurance of quiet had flown out the proverbial window quite awhile ago. And, okay, so he had been updating her on the 'suck issue' with a fair amount of regularity over the course of the last thirty minutes, but he was a neutered archangel/power-depleted pagan god; it was his right to complain.

"Well, I like to get my point across," he grumbles.

"Trust me," she replies, swiping a lock of hair off her sweaty forehead, "mission accomplished."

"You know what I'd _love _right now? Some skittles," he sighs wistfully, "or m&ms." He snaps his fingers and nothing happens but he does make the pronouncement, "Skittles _and_ m&ms!"

"Gross."

"You ever tried it?" he challenges. "It's like tasting a chocolate rainbow."

"Again, gross."

"Does that tree look familiar to you?"

Jo lets out a long-suffering groan, "Not this again."

"No, seriously, _look_ at it." Gabriel jabs a finger in the direction of a large, leafy tree behind him that Jo thinks might be an oak. "I'm telling you, that's the same tree."

Jo squints a look at him that straddles the line between indulgence and contempt. "They all look the same."

"That's racist."

"It's a tree."

"That's arborist."

She starts thinking again about strangling him with her boot laces, but they've been hiking for hours and Jo can sort of understand why he'd think it's the same tree, so she's a little more forgiving. The scenery isn't all that astounding and is mostly confined to: big tree, small tree, big tree, small tree, bush, bush, bush, big tree, repeat. Plus there's the fact that it's all the same colour. She points all of this out to Gabriel who responds by flatly denying that any of those things are remotely relevant.

Gabriel has seen more trees than she can even imagine, and yes, after awhile they _do_ all start to look the same, but then if you see enough of them they eventually all start to look unique again. "And this," he tells her with another firm jab at the tree behind him, "this towering bland monstrosity of grey leaves and bark is the same one we've been circling for the last thirty minutes."

"There's an easy way to solve this," she says, bending at the waist and fishing around in her boot. She pops back up with a knife.

"Whoa there, Wildcat!" He raises his hands in defence and backs away from her. The knife isn't very big or threatening by any stretch of the imagination, and it certainly won't kill him—it wouldn't even hurt all that much—but he's not about to put down 'getting stabbed..._again_' on his to-do list.

"Relax," she chastises, brushing past him and over to the tree. She raises her arm and begin to carve something into the bark, the dull edge of the blade etching out the lines of a large letter 'J'. When she's done she steps back to admire her work with a satisfied nod.

"There," she says. "Now we'll know if we pass it again."

She smiles over at him as if to say, 'happy now?' but he doesn't look happy. He looks like he's going through some serious sugar-withdrawal, frowning and irritable. Still he traipses after her, still keeping pace as they walk onward.

Despite his irritation Gabriel somehow manages to drag her into a discussion about, of all things, the 'Weekly World News'. This somehow devolves into a debate about the existence of extraterrestrials—Gabriel pro, Jo against, though Jo is pretty sure he's only pro to irritate her.

"Aliens _did not_ build the pyramids!" she declares, laughing at his ridiculous assertion.

"How do you know?" he replies in all seriousness. "Were _you_ there?"

"Were _you_?" She counters, realising only too late what a mistake she's made. "You're going to say you were, aren't you."

"As a matter of fact, yes, I was."

"And?" She prompts wearily, preparing herself for a big speech about how he was 'really busy that century' and 'wasn't paying much attention to a big game of Lincoln Logs in the desert' to which she would then respond by calling him a dirty, lying bastard. But he doesn't say any of those things. In fact, he doesn't say anything.

"Gabriel?"

She's met with tense silence. Jo looks over at him to see what the hell his problem is and she finds him distracted by something up ahead on their left. The quiet look of intense observation on his face unsettles her more than she's willing to admit.

"What is it?"

Suddenly he's beaming, practically vibrating with righteous joy as he bounds over to a tree… A tree with a large letter 'J' carved into the bark.

"_Ha_!" he cries, practically humping the base of the thing with all the frantic, happy adoration he expresses. "I _told_ you. Didn't I tell you? It's the _same_ tree."

Jo frowns, looking back over her shoulder at the way they'd come. "Maybe we got turned around when you made us stop?" she suggests, sounding like she's trying to convince herself. "We should go the other way."

"Or _maybe_ we're going in circles," he replies, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"We should go the other way," she says again, distracted by the anxious feeling that's sinking low into her gut. She passes the tree, her boots snapping through twigs and crunching over dead leaves.

"Hold on," he calls after her.

She doesn't stop.

"I don't think this is gonna to work," he confides when he catches up, his pace more ambling and loose than her own stiff, determined gait. Yet, he somehow always manages to keep up. She has to wonder if it's an angel thing.

"We just got turned around," she says firmly. "It's not rocket science, we just go the other way."

So they go the other way. Ten minutes of walking later and the other way leads them to a big tree with a large letter 'J' carved into the bark.

"That's just stupid." Jo stares at the tree, shaking her head. "But we came from-" She looked back over her shoulder.

"Told ya." Gabriel smirks. "You gotta kick that linear thinking, kid. This ain't Kansas, it's Limbo. Physics aren't so much _laws_ here as they are nifty suggestions."

"What do we do?"

"Nothing _to_ do," he replies, easing himself down to sit beneath the tree. "We're stuck in a loop in the fabric of reality. We've just gotta wait it out. See if a rift appears or wait of the thing to right itself."

'Wait it out,' quickly turns into something of a game with the singular objective being entertainment. At least, that's the way it is for Gabriel.

Sometimes he walks with her on the endless, ten-minute loops around the the tree, chatting at her as she sighs and rolls her eyes and pretends like she isn't listening. Sometimes he sits a few loops out, watching as she passes by the tree like clockwork. Sometimes she sits out a few loops with him and they talk or he tries to make her laugh by playing 'Eye-Spy,' which was a game that takes on a whole new meaning when everything is the same colour.

After the first few loops she starts cutting notches into the tree every time she passes it, marking time. She calls it quits at twenty-two notches when it becomes boring and tedious and just a little depressing. After that Gabriel somehow convinces her to start marking time with expletives instead and the tree starts to look like a bathroom stall door at a seedy night club.

"Cock wrangler!" Gabriel calls up to her in helpful suggestion when she completes loop #36 and stops to carve into the tree he's sitting under.

She brushes his suggestion aside,"Too long," and begins to chip away at a small space of unsullied grey bark with her iron knife, spelling out 'CUMTWAT' in rough, spiky letters.

When she's finished Gabriel stands up to look at her work, brushing wood shavings from his jacket and grinning at her so hard that his dimples became like canyons. "Congratulations. Kid, you are my new favourite human."

Jo is trying to think up a suitably acerbic response when something in the bushes across the way catches her eye. It's just a quick flash of something bright and shiny in the leaves, like metal glinting off the sun. It's there one moment and gone the next. Probably nothing, she reasons despite the nagging feeling telling her it's not.

"Lemme see that thing," Gabriel says, reaching for the knife. "I wanna underline that baby."

Jo sees the thing from before glimmering in her peripheral vision as Gabriel is going for the knife. She reaches out, grabbing him by the sleeve and digging her short, blunt nails into his arm, halting his intention to grab the blade.

"Ah-how!" he cries dramatically. "What're you-" but he's cut off when she tightens her grip on his arm. In her other hand her fingers constrict like a vice around the handle of the knife.

Jo is only a little startled when Gabriel's other hand covers over hers, gently drawing her fingers off his sleeve. "Okay, I get it," he says, his voice soft and understanding. His lips suddenly quirk into an easy grin, "No touching Josie's knife. Got it."

He steps away, kicking his boot against the dirt as his grin turns cautious, like he's actually afraid she's going to turn the knife on him. "I'm just gonna go take a little walk," he announces. "Give you some time to cool down, kay?"

She replies with a dull nod. "Yeah, I think... That's a good idea."

Gabriel nods as he slides back onto the path they've worn down through the trees with their endless loops and, as he does, he tossed her a quick wink. "See ya soon."

When he's gone, Jo forces herself to relax and loosen her grip on the knife. She holds it lightly in her hand as she leans back against their mutilated tree and tries not to look at the bushes where she'd seen the glinting thing. For five awkward minutes she waits, not quite knowing what to do with herself, when suddenly a yelp of surprise echoes from within the bushes and their leaves began to shake violently.

Jo tightens her grip around her knife once again and, just as she does, a woman—tall, slender, with twisting curls of raven hair and wide eyes—stumbles out through the bushes. She's wearing a light canvas dress and, draped around her neck on a series of delicate chains, coins of various shapes and sizes shimmered in the light. Jo identifies the necklace as the source of the glinting thing she'd seen earlier.

The woman struggles as she emerges from the bushes and, as she clears the leaves and branches, Jo sees that she's being manhandled out into the open by a very amused Gabriel. As soon as the stranger's dust-covered sandals meet the path between the bushes and the tree at Jo's back, the woman twists out of Gabriel's arms and rounds on him, glaring.

"You tricked me!" she accuses, her voice a light, accented melody.

"Well, _duuuh_," Gabriel strings out with a laugh, gesturing at himself. "_Trickster_, remember?"

The woman just fumes, crossing her delicate arms across her ample chest and turning her eyes away from Gabriel, which only seems to make him brim with even more mirth.

"How ya been, anyway?" he inquires, tipping towards her slightly, a mischievous grin on his face. "Long time no see."

Jo, whose grip on the knife has refused to loosen, comes forward to join them on the path, looking back and forth between the two.

Gabriel, who was still smirking up a storm, has yet to look away from the woman. Conversely, she apparently will look anywhere except for at Gabriel.

"You two know each other?" Judging by their body language and Gabriel's previous comment, it's more of a request for confirmation than a blind shot in the dark.

"Josie," Gabriel announces, grinning like Christmas as he motions to their willowy guest, "meet Persephone." He reverses the introduction, "Seph, Josie."

The woman in question lets out a huff and rolls her eyes but says nothing, as if humouring Gabriel is an unpleasant but necessary chore.

"Persephone is Mistress of the Underworld," Gabriel informs Jo, "and my lovely ex-girlfriend."

* * *

><p><strong>End Note 2: <strong>Biographical note, as promised. So, for those who care, Masanobu Tsuji was a pretty heinous Colonel in the Japanese Imperial Army in World War Two. He ordered and participated in a number of terrible atrocities, including the infamous Bataan Death March, but after an Allied victory he was never tried for war crimes because he was recruited by the American intelligence community. He worked for them for awhile before disappearing in Laos in the 1960s. I just felt like he was the type of person that would attract someone like the Trickster to take righteous vengeance and, because part of this story will deal with Gabriel/Loki's background a little, I thought I'd start to bring it in here as a bit of foreshadowing. Why? Because I like to be writing-ninja like that. Though, because I was pretty esoteric and heavy-handed with it, and now that I've told you about it, it kind of ruins the effect. So very not-ninja of me. I'll try to do better next time. Stay tuned!

**End Note: **Dun, dun, dun! Hey, Supernatural opened the door to the whole pagan-gods thing, I'm just walking through. Sorry if this chapter ended a little oddly but I didn't really know how to finish it without it being super-crazy long. The next chapter will pick up pretty much where we leave off here.


	3. Chapter 2: Trust Enough

**Author's Note: **So this chapter is much shorter than the last, but fret not faithful reader because I'm always writing more. Also, I made some edits to the last chapter, but nothing you need to go back and read. I just fixed some things that were bothering me a little. I know, I hate after-edits too. I'll now close this note with yet another frantic plea for reviews. *sob* Don't you care at all?

**Author's Note 2: **I also just wanted to give a quick, special shout-out to "Cardifrift" who is my loyal alpha Beta. He tells me when I'm writing stupid and sometimes I even listen. Now on with the show!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

**Trust Enough**

* * *

><p>Growing up around hunters does something to you—it messes with your sense of trust, it hardens you in ways you might not expect. Jo had always seen that as a good thing. As a young girl in a dark and vicious world where very real horrors lie in shadows and underneath beds, something as simple and yet as complicated as trust can sometimes mean the difference between living to see the next sunrise or dying a quick and bloody death.<p>

Being dead, these things shouldn't matter to her anymore, but they do. That's why when she feels the twinning strand of trust weaving its way between herself and Gabriel while sitting beneath their tree in the loop, even as he mocks and takes nothing seriously and tells off-colour jokes, she instantly doesn't trust that trust. Ellen Harville hadn't raised some wide-eyed doe conditioned to blindly follow the first thing with junk between its legs.

And when Persephone simpers cooly at Gabriel and says "You haven't changed a bit, Loki," Jo knows her instincts had been correct.

"_Loki_?" Jo intones pointedly at Gabriel.

He half turns to her, flashing her a tense smile. "That's my name, don't wear it out." His eyes widen slightly, as if urging her to go alone with it.

Fuck that. "Why is she-"

The words 'calling you that' are lost abruptly when a hand closes around her shoulder, Gabriel slipping over to her side. "Now, now," he tuts lightly, "plenty of me to go around, ladies. No need to get territorial."

"I wouldn't worry about that," Persephone laughs, sounding like peals of wind chimes. "I'm only here to help you out."

"Help us out?" Jo repeats, shrugging Gabriel's hand off and stepping towards the other woman. "You mean _out,_ out?"

Persephone's smile is a soft confirmation. "Out of the loop, yes."

"Why would you do that?" Jo says, her trust issues twitching as she exudes doubt and suspicion. "What's in it for you?"

"More to the point," Gabriel adds, arms folding over his chest defensively as he levels his own suspicious look at her, though his is more tinged with confusion than real mistrust. "Why is this any of your concern?"

Persephone sighs and says nothing.

Gabriel frowns contemplatively, "Not that I'm not grateful for the random act of kindness, but what are you even _doing_ here? Shouldn't you be lounging around in Hades, eating pomegranates and being fanned by dutiful slave-boys?"

The beautiful goddess laughs and this time it's a bitter sound, her shoulders seeming to shake more with sorrow than amusement. Jo even thinks there might be tears in Persephone's dark eyes as the other woman slowly shakes her head. "This _is_ Hades," she says, adding, "At least it used to be."

"No," Gabriel says slowly, his anxiety registering in his tense expression, "this is _Limbo_. You know, cosmic waiting room for those unwashed, unenlightened heathens of the Judeo-Christian persuasion?"

Jo puzzles a little at Gabriel's words. It isn't everyday you hear a self-professed archangel of the lord refer to the faithful as a bunch of unwashed, unenlightened heathens.

"There's no way that this place is Hades _and_ Limbo. That's crazy. It has to be one or the other, Seph."

"I'm not crazy," she snaps, glaring at him. "I know where we are. I'm telling you that this _used_ to be Hades. This used to be my home."

"Well, that's just not possible. That's-" Gabriel stops. He seems to think things over and when he speaks again, he looks sober and weary with trepidation. "What happened, Seph?"

Persephone shrugs, seeming a little lost. "I don't know how to explain…" The look of pure, helpless sorrow on Persephone's beautiful face provoks a distant echo of sympathy in Jo.

The goddess folds her arms around herself in an act of self-comfort. She suddenly looks like a statue that has been carved to express beauty, sadness and fatigue.

"Something came," she says faintly, her tone absent with remembrance. "Something powerful. Hades was destroyed with a _word_. My husband," Persephone shakes her head sadly, "He flickered out of existence like he'd never even been there to begin with. I was caste out, sent here to the Outlands to usher souls back to the _light of civilisation_," she say, her voice twisting with acrid sarcasm.

"What could do something like that?" Jo wonders, a shiver of unease creeping down her spine that she acknowledges and then pushes away like any good hunter is trained to do.

"I haven't seen its face," Persephone says. "I don't even know its name. Everything happened so quickly. It all changed so fast."

Gabriel steps towards her and rests a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. "It's alright."

He understands how difficult it is for someone like Persephone, a goddess who has spent an endless lifetime being shuffled back and forth between the underworld and Mount Olympus like a child of divorce, to comprehend something as transient and human as change. Sometimes even he was still a little thrown by it sometimes.

"First things first," he says, trying to sound confident and not at all freaked out by recent developments. "I assume you know the way out of this thing, right?"

Persephone nods. "I can find the fissures to get in and out of this loop. We should go quickly though. The longer we stay here, the greater our chances of encountering a raiding party."

"You mean, there's more people out here?" Jo says, eyes scanning the wall of trees around them as if people will appear if she looks hard enough.

"It's rare that they come out this far, but it has been known to happen. I've lost souls to them before," Persephone says faintly, distracted as she steps away from Gabriel and peers down the path, her eyes searching for something.

"Who are they?" Jo asks, casting a wary glance between Gabriel and the goddess. "What do they want people for?"

"It's complicated," Persephone replies, still searching the air. "I'll explain later, but we have to go now if we want to get to The Settlement by nightfall."

"The Settlement," Gabriel echoes. "This would be that 'light of civilisation' thing you were talking about?"

"It is," Persephone confirms. "As I said, its complicated. I'll explain on the way, but right now we have to find the fissure."

"Didn't you come through it?" Jo says. "Can't you just, you know, go back the way you came?"

"Doesn't work like that, right?" Gabriel looks to Persephone for confirmation. The goddess merely nods and steps towards the trees just off the edge of the path.

Gabriel hums in agreement, turning back to Jo. "'Member what I said about linear thinking? Well, this is the kinda thing I was talking about," he explains. "The way in and the way out aren't always in the same place. It's all very metaphysical and complicated to explain."

"I found it," Persephone announces, her hand outstretched into the space between two large trees like she's trying to grasp some kind of invisible fabric floating through the air. "It's here."

Jo steps past Gabriel, shooting him an exasperated look as she moves over to where Persephone is standing. "How can you tell?"

"Reach out," Persephone instructs. "Can you feel the difference?"

Jo hesitantly complies, extending her arm into the space between the trees where Persephone's hand is suspended. The pressure is slightly off, making her hand feel heavier than it should have felt and there's a subtle tingling running up her arm, kind of like it's starting to fall asleep.

"We should go," Persephone says again.

Jo withdraws her arm. "What makes you think I'm just going to trust you? I don't know you."

Leaving out whole issue if this woman apparently being an ancient Greek goddess straight out of mythology—because, hey, she's seen a lot of weird shit in her time on Earth and now she's walking around Limbo with a guy who claims to be an archangel—there's no reason for her to trust that Persephone is helping them out of the kindness of her heart.

"Loki knows me," the goddess says, sounding as if that fact alone should have garnered her all the trust she could ask for.

"Yeah, well, I just met _Loki_ a few hours ago." Jo throws a pointed look at the archangel. "What makes you think I trust him anymore than you?"

"Oh, I never said you should trust him," Persephone replies, smiling coyly over at Gabriel. "In fact, I'd have to think you quite the fool if you did that."

"Now, now," Gabriel admonishes tightly, actually sounding like he's conferring an honest warning. "Let's not get mean."

Persephone ignores him in favour of addressing Jo. "Trust must be earned, I know this," she says. "But you have to give a person a chance to earn that trust. I'm just asking for the chance to earn yours, Josie."

Jo supposes that she does have a point. And though she has serious doubts as to the effectiveness of her knife against either of these beings, it still gives her a bit of assurance. Her mother used to tease her by calling the knife her 'security blanket'. It did sort of fill that role, though. It made her feel safe even when she so obviously wasn't and it allowed her to take risks she might not otherwise take.

As Jo leans down and sheaths the knife back into her boot, she reasons that this is just one of those risks.

"It's Jo," she tells Persephone, jerking a thumb over to Gabriel, "He just doesn't seem to wanna get that."

Persephone recognises that putting the knife away and Jo's subtle invitation to use her name is an overture of trust. She smiles at the girl, confiding, "Loki has quite a fondness for pushing people's buttons. You shouldn't let him know it gets to you or he'll make sure it catches on. That's how I got stuck being called 'Seph' for three centuries. It was infuriating."

"Yeah, 'Josie' kinda makes me want to claw his eyes out," Jo admits.

"We could always work together," Persephone offers. "You take the left eye and I'll take the right?"

"Great, they're bonding," Gabriel grumbles. "You ladies want to sit around and braid each other's hair or can we get going?"

Twin glares zero in on him but he remains unfazed, rolling his eyes. "Yes, I'm a misogynistic bastard. Acknowledged. Let's go."

Slipping through the fissure isn't very complicated or even all that remarkable. Persephone goes first and Jo follows after her, flaked by Gabriel. There's the sudden feeling of pins and needles, the subtle weight of an added pressure around her like she's swimming to the bottom a deep pool, and then it's over. Glancing over her shoulder, Jo can almost make out a hazy smudge in the distance that might be their tree. It was like they had walked a mile in seconds rather than just a few steps. _Linear thinking_, she reminds herself.

Persephone leads them deeper into the forest, walking with the sort of determination someone has when they know exactly where they're going. They follow a path of sorts; it's nowhere near as defined as the one she and Gabriel had worn down around the tree, but rather a twisting track of dirt and downtrodden undergrowth that laces itself around trees and clumps of foliage.

With their guide a few paces ahead of them, looking too intent on where they're going to pay them much attention, Jo decides that now is as good a time as any to interrogate Gabriel.

He has his hands shoved in his pockets, whistling a nonsense tune like they're all just out for a leisurely walk, casual as can be. She wants to destroy that for him. She wants him to feel as off-balance as she does and so she decides that this is her moment to prod him for answers.

Jo opens with a simple statement, keeping her voice low and direct. "She called you Loki."

He stops whistling and with a flare of victory she catches the slight wince that accompanies his words. "Noticed that did you?"

"Wanna tell me what gives?"

He pretends to give it some thought. "Mmmm, nope. Not so much."

Her mouth purses into a thin line and she shakes her head with stiff disappointment. "I knew I couldn't trust you."

"Hey, if it was easy to explain, I would," he counters. "But it's not. It's complicated, alright?"

"I'm getting really sick of that word."

"Join the club," he retorts. When she doesn't respond except to glare at him, he sighs. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I'm lying more to her than to you."

"Why would that make me feel better? That still makes you a liar."

"True," he acknowledges, raising a finger and qualifying, "But also not true." He gestures at Persephone, "To her I'm a liar, but with you I'm just omitting for the sake of simplicity. I'm not wilfully trying to deceive you."

"How do I know that?" she scoffs,incisive. "You're a liar, remember?"

He clickes his tongue in annoyance. "Yeah, that's a problem."

Lost in thought, he reaches out and absentmindedly snaps off a twig from a passing tree. He rols it between his fingers, bending the stem until it gives and breaks into short one-inch segments. He drops the pieces on the ground, crunching them beneath his boots as he walks over them. "Would it help if I made a promise not to lie to you?"

As soon as he says the words, Gabriel reflects on them and finds himself a little baffled. He can't really reason why he cares one way or the other whether she trusts him or not and he's certainly never been in the habit of running around making promises to humans that he won't lie to them. In fact, it was sort of his thing to do the opposite. He isn't sure he likes this new preoccupation with trust and truth he seems to have with this wayward young hunter.

But he did like her, he knew that much. For a human she was relatively interesting. He liked how fun she was to annoy and that she wasn't very good at hiding what was going in her mind. It was sort of comforting to know someone's thoughts and emotions despite now lacking the ability to crawl inside their head and suss them out from the inside.

In that way she kind of reminded him a lot of their obdurate mutual acquaintances, the Winchesters. She was easy to decipher and yet still fairly unpredictable. After a multitude of lifetimes spent around humans, unpredictable was a welcome relief from predictably disappointing.

Gabriel likes unpredictable, even though it's pretty much the annoying keyword to the conversation about trust she's just ambushed him with. He hadn't seen it coming even though, thinking back, he probably should have.

"Promising not to lie still doesn't really solve the problem," she points out.

"We could pinky swear," he offers, mostly just to see how she'd respond.

Instead of accusing him of being juvenile and not taking this seriously like he expects, Jo lets out a soft laugh and plays along, saying, "Why don't we just prick our fingers and swear in blood?"

Gabriel doesn't laugh. In fact, he seems to be considering her quip. After a few moments of consideration he simply declares, "We should."

"I was kidding."

"I'm not," he answers seriously. "We should make a blood oath."

Jo frowns, reasoning, "What's the point? It would be just as useless as the pinky swear only with a lot more pointless bloodshed."

"Not if you say the right words," he tells her. "Say the right thing, sprinkle some angel's Grace over it, and whamo, instant bond o' trust."

"Not that I'm agreeing to this stupid idea, but I thought you said you couldn't use your powers."

"I can't," he agrees. "But there's a big difference between using and _utilising_ them." He shrugs, "Scraping a little off the top to sanctify a simple blood oath should be a piece of cake."

"You could always just _stop lying_," she suggests.

"If we're trying for honesty, I gotta tell ya, that probably ain't happening," he admits.

After that they lapse into a silence that is, while not completely awkward, certainly isn't comfortable. It isn't long before he grows bored trying to distract himself with monochrome scenery and the sensual sway of Persephone's hips as she strides out ahead of them.

Gabriel glances over at Jo as she walked beside him in quiet contemplation. After a while of this, he gets fed up with the silence and prompts, "So, what do you say?"

"I'll think about it."

Gabriel lets the matter drop because he can see by her expression that he isn't going to get anything more than that. She said that she was going to think about it and he believed her.

"Do you think we can we trust her?" Jo asks quietly, nodding up ahead at Persephone.

Gabriel sighs and gives it some thought. "I don't know," he replies honestly.

If he'd been asked that question a few thousand years ago he wouldn't have hesitated to say yes. But he hasn't seen her in a long time and it was obvious that she wasn't the same carefree being she used to be. She was burdened and weary now and there was a coldness to her eyes that had never been there before.

There'd been a time when she had exuded all the virtues of spring: fresh youth, vitality, and a pretty pastel beauty that made you think of dew on flower petals. Being around her now was like sinking into the oncoming bitterness of winter. It was unsettling and it made him think about things that he resolutely did not want to think about.

_You're not in the void_, he reminds himself. _You shouldn't care._

"Can I trust you?" Jo asks suddenly. Her expression is a little confused, like she can't really understand why she just asked that. Their entire conversation had just revolved around the fact that no, in fact, she couldn't trust him. Nothing had changed. There's no reason why she should believe his answer.

"I don't know," he again answers as honestly as he can manage, adding, "But hell, you could give it a shot."

Jo considers his answer in silence, the skin of her right ankle brushing against the knife sheath in her boot as she walks. Until she made up her mind about the blood oath thing, blind faith and no small amount of risk was going to have to be enough.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I know, short. More will be coming though, so stay tuned!


	4. Chapter 3: Undesirables

**Author's Note: **Firstly, thank you all so much for the wonderful reviews! You fuel the creation. Sorry it's taken a bit of time between updates but I've had exams to write, for which I had to be very serious. Maybe that's why this chapter came out the way it did. I almost didn't post this but, eh, I'm going somewhere with it so I might as well.

**WARNING: **Background, non-explicit, non-con ahead.

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><p><strong>Chapter Three<strong>

**Undesirables**

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><p>In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost. - Dante Alighieri, <em>Inferno <em>

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. - Joseph Conrad, _Under Western Eyes_

* * *

><p>Considering that she's been stomping around Limbo with someone like Gabriel for who knows how long, it's perhaps a little ironic that it's the silence that gets to her. Before she'd begged for quiet, pleaded with him for it. The phrase 'be careful what you wish for,' has never been so despised as it is by Jo at this very moment.<p>

Jo decides to leave him alone when it becomes clear that he's in no mood for conversation. He only grunts and hums at her when she tries to prompt any sort of exchange, so Jo figures that she should go try to talk to Persephone instead. Jo picks up her pace, matching stride with her while Gabriel lags behind.

"You're awful quiet over there," Jo says to Persephone, testing the waters of communication with the reticent goddess.

Persephone says nothing back. Ordinarily Jo would take offence at the perceived rudeness, write her off as a bitch, and go back to poking at Gabriel until he gets over whatever the hell is wrong with him, but Jo sees that Persephone isn't being rude. She's distracted. Her steps are sure and determined, but it looks like every one requires significant dedication. A thin line of concentration had appeared over her brow at some point, looking strange and out-of-place on her prefect face.

Jo tries again. "Hey, are you alright?"

She sluggishly absorbs Jo's words, like she's reviewing them before commenting. "Oh, yes," she finally replies, explaining, "It just takes some concentration to get where you are going here. If you let the destination slip from your mind for more than a few moments, you could end up almost anywhere. That's how you got yourselves into that loop earlier. You weren't concentrating."

"Fucking Limbo," Jo swears, low and under her breath.

Persephone hears it though and hums in agreement, lips curving up in what might've passed for a smile.

"So, if you have to think about this Settlement place anyway, you could tell me about it?" Jo suggests, reminding, "You said you'd explain on the way."

"I did."

For a few moments Persephone falls silent again, but Jo can see by the look on her face that she's only collecting her thoughts.

"There used to be many more souls here," she begins, careful as her words take a meandering path towards their destination. "More souls than you can imagine. But when Hades was remade, nearly all of them were destroyed. Only a few of us from the old world remain. The Chosen, it called us. I think it kept us around for amusement."

Persephone pauses, recollecting her thoughts, orienting herself back to thinking about the Settlement so they don't stray too far off their path while she talks.

"I suppose that after awhile we became tedious and so new souls began to appear in the Outlands. At first there were only a few, but then more kept arriving. These new souls were so pleasing that they were rewarded with the Settlement. It's a place where souls are allowed to live as if they are still on Earth, _alive_." Persephone shakes her head, mouth turning downward in disgust.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"It is not the old way," Persephone replies simply. "It is not my place pass judgement. My charge is only to lead new souls from the banks of the River Lethe to the Settlement."

"You don't sound too happy about your 'charge'," Jo observes.

The goddess's response is dispassionate and restrained. "Doing this menial task is my punishment."

"What'd you do?" Jo asks, wondering quietly to herself, what _can_ you do in a place like this?

"I disobeyed." Then, with resignation, she adds, "I will not do so again."

Jo doesn't comment on that because she doesn't quite know what to say. It's obvious that Persephone doesn't want to talk about it and she wants to respect that, so instead she asks about the other people the goddess had mentioned back at the tree, the raiding parties she'd talked about.

"Not everyone was happy to live in the peace and amity of the Settlement," Persephone sighs. "There were some…restless souls, shall we say. The Undesirables broke with the Settlers and left to establish a community more to their liking."

"Undesirables?"

"Criminals," she clarifies. "Thieves, murders, rapists. The dregs of humanity. Damaged souls who take pleasure only in chaos and destruction."

"And, what, they just left the Settlement peacefully?" Jo sort of doubts that people like that would just say 'thanks but no thanks' to the Settlers and go on their merry way.

"The Undesirables are led by a particularly vicious soul, but aside from being merely ruthless he is also cold and calculating. He saw it in their best interest to broker an accord with the Settlement. In exchange for being left alone, the Settlers provide food and provisions to the Undesirables."

"If they get what they need from the Settlers, then why send out raiding parties?"

"Because they are greedy for new souls to torture," Persephone says. "In life their leader was a depraved healer who performed heinous experiments on his patients and killed indiscriminately and now he continues his experiments here. He reasons that by killing a soul, he can come to understand the nature of our existence here."

"Can he even do that?" Jo asks. "Can you kill a soul?"

"Only if you try very, very hard," Persephone replies, "and Mengele is nothing if not persistent."

"_Mengele_?" Gabriel exclaims from behind them with incredulous alarm. "You're saying that _Josef_ _Mengele_ is running around this place?"

It's then that Jo notices that while talking either she and Persephone have slowed down or Gabriel has sped up, because now he's only a few paces behind them and has apparently been eavesdropping on their conversation.

"Yes, somewhere," Persephone says.

In response Gabriel lets out a murmur of deep dissatisfaction.

"Bad?" Jo prompts.

"_Understatement_," he snaps. "This guy put the psych in psycho. He was _so_ bad, lot of people back in the day thought he was possessed by a demon, but nope, it was all him. 100% pure human evil."

Gabriel makes a sound that might be disgust, his pace slowing as he falls back a little behind them again. When Jo looks over her shoulder at him, he looks distracted, absorbed in his own thoughts, his perpetual smirk curving down at the corners of his mouth in a way that looks unnatural. He's gone back to snapping his fingers. He does it absently, almost like he doesn't even realise that he's doing it anymore. Jo frowns at this, turning back to Persephone.

"What- What is he, exactly?" Jo asks, tilting her head a little to indicate the brooding archangel behind them. She remembers Gabriel telling her that he's been lying to Persephone, but she wants to know what sort of lies he's been telling.

"Loki? He's a Trickster. A god of mischief born of the Norse pantheon," Persephone answers like they're talking about different brands of peanut butter and not a cosmic being of—under normal circumstances—unimaginable power.

"A god of mischief," Jo muses, thinking over everything that she knows about the mouthy archangel. "Yeah, that fits. Though right now he looks more kinda like a god of misery."

"It's Mengele," the goddess confides in quiet explanation. "Loki gets easily disappointed by humans at times. He doesn't understand how horrible you can be towards each other because, despite all his talk, he really does care for your kind. He likes to think the best of you. Not all gods are like that. Not all gods can see you as he does. Even I admit that I don't quite understand it."

"You don't like humans?" Jo couldn't quite see that. While Persephone hadn't exactly been gregarious, she'd at least been politely kind.

"Don't misunderstand, I like humans very much," Persephone says. "We gods eventually learned to tolerate and even appreciate humans. We're especially fond of those that interest us or offer us worship, but beyond that… Well, it's just that you are so very small to us," she says, trying to explain things objectively. "Small and frail and very often difficult to understand. After a while most gods stopped trying."

Jo looks back over her shoulder at Gabriel to see if he's still eavesdropping, but he gives no indication that he's listening. In fact, he seems utterly absorbed now by watching his boots as he walks, his expression still serious and contemplative.

"But not- Loki," Jo guesses, stumbling only slightly over the name as she turns back to Persephone.

"Not Loki," she confirms. "At a time when other gods were loosing interest, Loki seemed to become… enthralled. Humans fascinated him. He- he _loves_ them, I think, in a way that I don't understand. When he saw that we didn't see eye to eye on the point, we stopped seeing so much of each other."

"So you two were really, y'know, _together_?" Jo knows she sounds sceptical, but somehow she can't quite picture the two of them as a serious couple. Present context excluded, she can't really see Gabriel as a serious _anything_.

"Sporadically," Persephone replies lightly. "I think we both knew it was only an amusing dalliance. We were different people back then," she says, turning slightly wistful and then melancholy. "The world was a different place."

Jo nods as if she understands, even if she doesn't. After a stretching period of silence between them all, somewhere behind them, Gabriel starts to whistle again. Whatever he'd been struggling with seems to be fading away, slowly restoring him to his usual annoying self, and though she'd never hint at it, Jo's sort of glad.

* * *

><p>Later, still trudging along the winding path of dirt by Persephone's direction, Gabriel switches from whistling a series of made-up-on-the-fly refrains and begins to whistle something that actually sounds like a song. Jo occasionally glances back at him, gauging his mood. He seems happy enough now, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket as he walks at a languid pace behind them, head sometimes thrown back to catch a bit of the grey sun that strains through the treetops in scraps of passing light.<p>

Persephone still seems pretty preoccupied with concentrating on the Settlement, but her forehead isn't as creased with effort as it was before and her expression is calm, almost serene even. Though it obviously takes some concentration, there's something rote about her steps, like she's walked this way a thousand times before. It's probably been more than a thousand times, Jo reasons.

She wonders what it must be like for Persephone, dethroned and basically powerless, forced to wander through the perverted remains of her world, shepherding the newly arrived souls of disoriented humans, creatures once so far below her notice that empathy for them had seemed like a waste. Jo wonders how many souls Persephone has escorted through the forests of Limbo. How many were young and scared, how many hopeless and lost, how many were someone's child, someone's parent?

"Hey," Jo says, catching the goddess's attention, "You wouldn't happen to know if there's a woman here named Ellen Harvelle, would you? She's my mother." She knows it's a long shot, her mom may not even be here, but it's worth a try.

Persephone's brow furrows now in thought rather than concentration. "I'm not certain," she says. "Not everyone I guide to the Settlement tells me their name."

"Oh," Jo hadn't considered that. She figures she should probably describe to Persephone what Ellen looks like, only Jo's never had to put her mother's appearance into words before. Also, given the fact that things like specific hair and eye-colour are pretty much off the table here in Greyville, describing her mom seems like even more of a challenge.

"She's about a foot taller than me," Jo attempts to convey by holding her hand, palm flat, above her head, "and her hair is a little past her shoulders, darker than mine but lighter than yours."

Persephone shakes her head in apology. "I'm sorry. I don't think I've met her."

Jo sighs and shrugs, "No sweat."

"But just because I haven't seen her, doesn't necessarily mean anything," Persephone says. "Lots of souls pass through this forest and I don't meet them all. Some people even find their way to the Settlement on their own. It's possible that she's there, waiting for you."

"Or she could've been picked up by one of those raiding parties and is getting tortured by Dr. Psycho right now, right?"

Persephone concedes, "That is another possibility, yes."

"Way to make me feel better," Jo grumbles, dragging her lower lip between her teeth.

"I- I'm sorry," Persephone says a little awkwardly. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"I'm not upset," the young hunter professes wearily. "I'm just worried about my mom."

"I understand." There's a sober pause and then the admission, "I often worry about my own mother."

"Demeter… right?" Jo pulls the name from the recesses of one of her memories where she is a twelve year old girl curled up in the corner of a public library, thumbing her way through a book on ancient Greek mythology.

"I doubt that she is still alive," Persephone says, absently brushing her fingertips over her heart. "I haven't felt her presence in many years."

"I'm sorry," is Jo's weak but sincere offer. "You must miss her."

"I do, very much. For a long time, she was my only companion. Zeus, my father, was only ever truly attentive to a few of his offspring and I was not one of them," Persephone explains, not sounding bitter or upset about it, just matter-of-fact. "My mother was enough."

"I was raised by a single mom, too," Jo tells her. "My dad, he died when I was little and I think Mom felt like she had to be parent enough for the both of them. It was hard, raising me by herself, running a business, doing everything. I kinda just wish I could've thanked her or something, y'know? I should've appreciated her more, let her know that I was grateful."

"Mothers always know," Persephone assures sagely. The two share a soft smile and Jo thinks that maybe Persephone sells herself a little short when it comes to understanding humans.

* * *

><p>The only sound they make comes from the snapping of twigs and the crunching of dried leaves beneath their feet as they walk. And, of course, Gabriel's whistled rendition of Johnny Cash's 'Walk the Line.'<p>

They go on like this for awhile until Jo falls back a little to Gabriel's side, grinning softly as he accidentally-on-purpose nudges his shoulder against hers and strikes up a conversation about the history of cotton candy. Jo is surprised to learn that the stuff was originally called "Fairy Floss" and that the first machine that made it was invented by the future president of the Tennessee Dental Association, an irony which Gabriel enjoys.

He's giving her an eye-witness account of the 1904 World's Fair where "Fairy Floss" first debuted when he suddenly stops mid-step, mid-sentence, and throws an arm out, grabbing the sleeve of her jacket and making her jerk to a halt as well. Jo's half-worried that he's about to break into a grin and point out a large oak tree with a litany of expletives carved into it, but then she sees that Persephone has stopped as well, her shoulders tense, a delicate hand raised to them in signal.

"What is it?" Gabriel demands, his eyebrows pinching together, fingers still griped around Jo's sleeve like he's worried she'll try to start setting things on fire if he lets go.

Persephone swiftly shushes him, turning slowly as she scans the trees around them. "I hear something."

Jo strains her ears but she can't hear anything. It only occurs to her now that there's been nothing to hear this entire time. No insects, no birds, no animals; even the wind rustling through leaves every now and then only gives the feint echo of the sound it should make.

She reaches up with the arm that Gabriel isn't holding and presses a palm flat against her chest, directly over her heart. She can't hear the sound of it beating, she can't feel it. Maybe it's not? She is supposedly dead, after all.

"Can you hear that?" Persephone asks Gabriel softly.

He shakes his head no. "Been having a little trouble getting all the bells and whistles to work since I fell down the rabbit hole."

Persephone blinks, tilting her head slightly, listening intently. After a moment of this she declares, "There are people coming. We shouldn't be out in the open like this."

Though he can't hear what she does, Gabriel apparently agrees because he tugs on Jo's sleeve, pulling her over towards a large cluster of bushes just off the path, announcing, "In here," before stomping into them, pulling Jo in behind him. Once sheltered within the leaves and branches, another tug at her sleeve gets her to kneel down on the ground and he settles himself at her side. Persephone follows behind them a moment later, squeezing in beside them and crouching low so that all three of them are huddled amongst the underbrush in a leafy concealment of branches.

As soon as they settle, the bushes around them stilling, three people emerge from the cover of nearby trees, ambling into view out of shadow and leaves; two men and a young woman between them, all three looking haggard and unwashed. When Jo gets a better look at them, she's immediately glad to be in the bushes.

The girl is wearing a tattered pale-coloured dress stained with grey dirt and flaking crusts of grey smears—blood. Her long dark hair hangs around her face in tangled strands sewn through with bits of leaves. Her hands are filthy and dark charcoal smudges ring her wrists where they're bound together out in front of her by a knotted scrap of her own torn dress. Her legs are so badly bruised and scraped that they'd throb primary colours in any other world but in this one they're marked by large splotches of varying shades of slate. Even beneath the grime, Jo can tell that she's only a few years older than herself.

The girl stumbles, bare dirty feet tripping through leaves and dirt as the burlier of her two captors reaches out and swipes a massive paw at her back, laughing at the effect as the girl shudders against the impact and struggles to stay upright. The leaner of the two men cackles with his bulky compatriot and grabs the girl up into his thin, bony arms, gathering her close against his gaunt frame in a perverted embrace.

"Careful there," cautions Skinny to Burly in a thick southern drawl, still chucking as the girl struggles in vain to get away from him, "don't wanna damage her too much. Boss likes 'em whole when he starts in on 'em."

As the girl bucks against him Skinny pushes her away and the momentum sends her sprawling onto her hands and knees in the dirt. "'Course, that don't mean we can't play with her a little," he says with a slow, lecherous, jack-o-lantern leer.

His hands stray down to his belt buckle and Jo knows where this is going. She knows that look in his eye. She's seen it before firsthand, directed at her from some of the seedier customers she's had to put up with in the past.

But Jo has always had the means to defend herself, her mother had made damn sure of that. The closest she had ever come to being in this sort of danger was at the hands of a possessed Sam Winchester, and even then that hadn't been his ultimate aim. But it's happening for this girl, right here, right now, and she doesn't stand a chance.

The girl knows this. Her eyes are wide and pleading, tears trailing ashen lines down her dirty face as she sobs. The sound she makes is a sad, mewling noise, like an injured animal that knows it's about to get beaten.

Jo feels a rush of protection, a need to defend this girl that comes on so strong it drives her to stand. Her efforts are aborted when Gabriel hastily grabs at her, wrapping an arm around her back and anchoring her to his side. "Don't," he whispers close against her ear, his breath hot her skin. "There's nothing we can do. We can't help her."

She ties to shove him off but he holds tight. She goes for the knife in her boot but Gabriel apparently knows what she's thinking because he clasps his hands around hers like a vice before she can get there. She tries to pull her hands free but he won't let go and now he's got both his arms around her, her back pressed against his chest.

"We have to do something," she whispers harshly, a fervid plea as she twists her neck to see him. Gabriel shakes his head no and in that horrifying moment Jo knows for certain that they're about to witness this girl out there get raped.

Jo looks to Persephone for help but the goddess is watching things with a quiet detachment that shocks the young hunter. "Aren't you going to do _anything_?" she demands through whispered accusation.

Persephone shakes her head. "I can't interfere. More will come if we try to stop them," she whispers back. "We don't have the means to fight them. We would all be captured."

"But you can't let this happen," Jo insists. "We have to help her."

"The only way to help her is by taking her place," Persephone says bluntly. "Are you willing to do that?" Gabriel's arms tighten around Jo, nearly crushing her ribs, as if he's worried she'll say yes.

Beyond the bushes Skinny looms over the girl, suddenly seeming impossibly large in comparison even despite his rawboned frame. His dirty fingers pluck his worn belt from the buckle's clasp and a button comes undone with the sound of rustled fabric. Jo hears everything with heightened awareness, every sound magnified like she's standing right beside them.

The quiet, metallic _snit _of his zipper as it's pulled down sends a swell of bile crawling up the back of her throat. Maybe it's the adrenaline pouring through her or maybe it's the horror and revulsion, but Jo can't stop shaking. Her every nerve ending feels like it's coiled with suppressed energy and inside her head she's screaming at herself to do something, to stop what's about to happen. Gabriel turns her in towards him, obscuring her view.

Jo pulls at him, fisting her hands into his jacket, and she doesn't know if she's trying to break free so she can see or to bury herself against him so she doesn't have to watch. "I can't… I can't…" she stutters against his collar. _I can't watch this_. _I can't stop this_._ I can't let this happen_. _I can't take her place_.

Gabriel threads his fingers through her hair, at a loss as to how best to comfort her and settling for trying to keep her as quiet and as still as possible so they're not discovered. If he can't stop this, can't protect the girl out there, at least he can protect the one sobbing against him.

The girl screams are like a dying thing, choked and frantic between chest-wrenching sobs. The two men laugh as they take turns on her and it seems to drag on for ages. Persephone watches the entire thing with a sort of detached disapproval that Gabriel desperately envies.

He's seen this sort of thing before, this kind of violation. How could not? He's been around since before the dawn of humanity and has seen every vile, despicable, heinous act these treasures of his Father have committed against themselves. But things used to be easier to manage.

Angels pride themselves on their ability to disconnect emotionally and, when you regularly ferry yourself back and forth between the visceral, pandemonium of sensation that is Earth and the more staid, transcendent glory of Heaven, it's not so difficult to do. Gabriel hasn't been back to Heaven in so long, he's become so immersed in humanity and sensation, that his off-switch is beyond rusty. Couple that with the mack-truck of weird that this place has slammed his Grace with and Gabriel finds himself feeling a little too raw, a little too open to human emotion.

And Jo, this tenacious but conversely fragile girl crying silent tears against his neck, makes it all so much worse. She's the microscope lens that pulls into focus the bitter, terrible disgust that wells inside him like a virus. It almost makes him want to shove her away, hand her off to Persephone so he can deal with pulling himself together. Instead he holds her closer, tighter, gentler, and focuses on trying to comfort her because it makes him feel like he's doing something, some small act to alleviate someone's suffering.

It ends as abruptly as it began, Skinny and Burly hauling the girl up out of the leaves and dirt and setting her back on shaking, unsteady legs. Jo risks a glance, expecting to find the girl in pieces from the way she'd been screaming like they'd been tearing her apart, but she's whole. Her eyes are empty glass shapes sunk into her head though. She's gone somewhere else.

No one says anything but Skinny prods at the girl to start moving and they follow with her like vicious pitbulls that, for the time being, have been sated. She moves like a shade, the same vacancy from her eyes seeping into her motions and like an apparition she slips back into the cover of the trees, her captors folding in around her until they're all one dark stain in the shadows, and then they disappear.

For what seems like a long time, no one makes a move to leave the bushes. No one talks. Jo's still shaking, face turned in against Gabriel's neck, his collar pasted to his skin where it's damp from her tears. His arms are still around her and he's not exactly sure who is holding on to whom any more. It feels like they've just awoken from some terrible, shared nightmare; the echo of it unreal and too awful to contemplate as reality.

"They're gone," Persephone announces. Something inside Jo cracks.

Waves of nausea cascade through her, making her mouth taste acidic. Her stomach flips and her throat tightens. She scrambles out of Gabriel's arms, clawing her way out of the bushes on her hands and knees, and promptly vomits.

As her retching coughs subside, she feels a gentle hand against her back. It's Gabriel.

Jo shrugs the hand off, twisting away from him with such a glare of hostility that it makes him recoil in surprise.

"Don't touch me," she pants, half command and half plea. She gets up on her feet, arms wrapping around her middle like she's about to freeze to death.

Gabriel holds up both hands in submission. "Alright," he says. "Okay."

Persephone steps daintily from the bushes like she's getting out of a bathtub, all fluid grace and calm serenity. Jo seethes with rage, her sick stomach suddenly nothing more than a distant memory.

"How could you just-" Jo shakes her head, fighting for her words through anger. "Don't you feel _anything_?"

The answer comes to Jo out of nowhere, as sudden as it is certain. The answer is no. No, she doesn't.

Persephone stands before Jo's fury with an odd look of perplexity, as if she can't figure out why she should be so upset. The word 'monster' rolls through Jo's thoughts like a tornado, uprooting the foundation of understanding she'd thought they'd been building between each other, but then it suddenly occurs to the hunter just how inhuman this being that stands before her is, how remote and alien. Persephone admitted that she'd stopped trying with humans a long time ago and here was the truth of that staring her right in the eyes.

Gabriel, however, is a different story. He stands apart from Jo, the third point in the triangle they form as they stand together beneath these damn grey trees. He outwardly reflects her own emotions back at her, looking just as shaken, just as abraded as she feels.

And as she looks at him, his eyes meeting hers across the few paces that stretch like a gulf between them, a deep spring of emotion overruns inside of her, spilling out grief and anger and guilt. He looks at her, seeing all of this, and regret joins the torrent of his own anguish. Looking at her he knows that even though she understands his reasons, she may not be able to forgive him for stopping her from trying to save that girl. The trust they'd been carefully nurturing like an infant child now lies cold in its crib.

Persephone tells them that they should continue on, warning that there are more Undesirables likely on their way. "The two men we saw will not be alone out here," she says. "More will follow."

Logically Jo knows that there's no reason to stay, that there are in fact many, many reasons why they should get moving, but simply walking away somehow feels like an acceptance of something that is unacceptable. Gabriel makes a move as if to reach out to her, but wisely stops himself in time.

"She's right," he sighs, expression grave, pleading with her to understand. "We should go."

_I'm sorry_, Gabriel says with only a look.

Jo's reply is just as wordless as she passes him, following Persephone as the goddess once again takes the lead. _You can't fix this._

Solemn and outwardly numb, they again begin to walk, the forest folding in around them like a bleak veil, swallowing them into the shadows of trees, a shroud of helpless despair weighting their every step, making each one a little harder to take than before. Jo would cry if only her anger didn't burn with such exquisite intensity. How they'll move forward now, she doesn't really know.

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><p><strong>Author's Note 2: <strong>So besides exams, what delayed this update was the simple fact that I'm not very happy with this chapter. Gabriel is much too broody for my liking here and the whole chapter is a little dark, but it has to be written because I'm "laying groundwork" or whatever. Things will bounce back though. I promise.


	5. Chapter 4: A Distant Shore

**A/N:** Sorry this update is so ridiculously late but I basically spent last few months completely changing my life. I moved to another country with (I kid you not) exactly 24 hours' notice (not for criminal reasons, so don't worry) and have spent the past few months dealing with all the problems something like that causes. Also, I had a crippling case of writers' block for a bit, which was just awful and depressing. But now I'm back! Also, cheers because it looks like I finished out Season 6 of Supernatural without my story becoming laughably AU! No promises for next season though. Read and enjoy and remember, as always, your reviews motivate!

**P.S. **There's some Latin in this chapter and, since I know very little Latin (read: none), I had to cheat and use the google translator. Apologies to any real Latin aficionados out there who read these and see only gibberish. For everyone else, enjoy the atmosphere it provides and, if curious, see the footnoted english translations at the end of this chapter. Now on with the show!

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><p><strong>Chapter Four<strong>

**A Distant Shore**

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><p>Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys - Alphones de Lamartine<p>

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. - Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

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><p>Trauma is a word you don't fully appreciate until you've experienced something traumatic. Jo, who lost her father at a young age and was raised around hard men who never shied away from telling her gritty tales about how horrible the world really is, knows trauma. She knows that the best way for her to handle it is to shut down, withdraw, regroup.<p>

Gabriel, who has been sheltered emotionally for the better part of always, doesn't. He tries to talk to her, making overtures, trying to coax her into a better mood, but Jo throws up roadblocks at every turn._ I don't want to talk to you_, she says by folding her arms over her chest and pursing her lips together.

After the fourth unsuccessful attempt, he exhales a defeated sigh under her cold glare and reluctantly accepts that he needs to just back off for a while. Gabriel resigns not to give up, but for the time being he's willing to give her some space. Objectively he understands that if he pushes her too quickly it could only end up making things worse between them.

So he lets her sulk, leaving her alone, and before long Jo finally speaks, but only to ask Persephone how much further they'll have to walk. She's beyond sick of this fucking forest and she wants out.

"We're almost there," is Persephone's reassuring reply, dainty on her feet as she strolls ahead of them. "The River Acheron is just over the rise, there." She points a slender, pale finger towards an incline of trees up the path. Jo almost doesn't believe that there's an end in sight, that this grey jungle doesn't just go on forever, but a little more walking proves Persephone's words.

When they finally do reach the edge of the forest, the tree-line thinning for the last few paces before fusing into a long stretch of sandy gunmetal coastline, Jo breaths a sigh of relief and stands in awe at the sudden change of scenery. Quicksilver waters tide against the shore, a sea of liquid mercury stretching out towards a horizon lost in a haze of curling white fog that hangs low over the glassy surface. Jo thinks it would be beautiful if it weren't so lunar and stark.

"Follow the shore that way," the goddess says, interrupting Jo's thoughts as she points up the beach a ways. "You'll come across a boat. Across the river you'll find the Settlement. Someone will be there to greet you when you arrive."

"You're not coming with us," Jo realises.

She's not sure how she feels about that. On the one hand, the adept echo of humanity Persephone displays—what had fooled Jo at first into a belief that there was compassion there—irritates the hunter beyond reason now that she knows the truth. Yet it was also somehow comforting to have someone else guiding, leading the way. Also, if Persephone left, she'd only have Gabriel for company again and she wasn't really sure she was ready to deal with him.

"I'm not permitted to accompany souls any further than the Acheron," Persephone explains. "I'm not welcome in the Settlement."

"Why? Did you pee on their version of the Alamo?" Gabriel drawls, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels a little, "P.S. San Antonio really can't take a joke." He gives a humoured sigh and muses, "I still can't believe I got Ozzy to do that."

The smirk he shoots at Jo is a little unsteady, unsure, but also hopeful. She can see that he's desperately trying to get himself back on an even keel, trying to cram a lid over his emotions and tap into his usual smart-ass facade. He probably figures that things will be alright if only he can manage that, and while Jo appreciates the effort and is even sort of relieved to see him return to his usual jackassery, no amount of joking is just going to fix things. It doesn't erase what happened.

"None of the Chosen are welcome at the Settlement," the goddess says with patience. "It was a condition of the Settlers' accord with the Undesirables and we try to respect their wishes."

Jo nearly launches into a screaming tirade about what sort of respect the Undesirables deserve, but she's tired from walking, drained emotionally, and realistically she knows that there's no point arguing the issue with a deity lacking all human compassion. So instead she settles for grumbling under her breath and walking down towards the water's edge, planting herself there while Gabriel and Persephone sort themselves out.

"So," Gabriel says casually, keeping one eye trained on Jo even as he addresses Persephone, as if half-expecting the hunter to just walk off and ditch him when he's not paying attention. "Where're you gonna go, anyway?"

"Back through the forest," Persephone replies, her naturally melodic voice weighted with responsibility as she remarks, "There will be more souls to guide." A wry smile appears she adds, "I only hope that they will have sense enough to remain by the river until I arrive and not wonder off, getting themselves caught in temporal traps."

"It was her idea," Gabriel whines, jerking a thumb at Jo.

Persephone merely smiles and shakes her head. "You never change, Loki," she says, wistful and fond.

"Can't improve on perfection," he boasts, but his accompanying grin is a little self-deprecating. Then, more serious, he says, "It was good seeing you again, Seph."

Persephone's smile is sad as she steps into him, pulling him into a loose, wispy embrace that feels like being held by a cloud. "Take care of yourself, old friend," she sighs against him, adding, "and take care of Jo."

She pulls away before he can tell her that's not something she has a right to ask of him; it's not her place to make such a demand. There's a part of him that rails against the implication that interest in this particular human is somehow still up for grabs. He saw her first, dammit!

But that was the old way, when acolytes and worshipers were allocated between the gods by such petty means as 'I licked it, so it's mine!'

Jo doesn't fall into that category anyway, particularly not right now when she seems to hate both of their guts, so there's no point in squabbling over the issue. Besides, he hasn't seen Persephone in a long time and despite everything that's happened he wants to part amicably. So he nods and waits with atypical patience while the goddess steps away, moving towards the water where Jo is standing stiff and wooden, a practically visible cloud of anger hanging over her.

"Jo," Persephone says softly, careful not to startle the girl as she comes up behind her. "I'd just like to say that I hope you find your mother and that our paths will cross again someday."

Jo's gratitude right now only extends as far as offering a brief, curt nod of her head in acknowledgement, which Persephone accepts with unflappable grace and poise. She gives a resigned nod of her own and turns to leave.

As she drifts back up the beach Persephone's hand strays out toward Gabriel and he takes it, holding it lightly for a moment as she passes him. "See ya, Seph," he says quietly, earning one last indulgent smile before he lets go. His eyes follow her up the beach as she passes into the tree line, slowly receding from view.

Then, in a way that feels startlingly abrupt, Jo and Gabriel are alone again; the only sound around them is the rush of water as it ebbs and flows against the shore. He breaths in a fortifying draw of unscented air and shoves his hands into his pockets, ambling down the beach towards her.

On the best of surfaces Gabriel's walk is a unique, rolling sort of swagger, but on the soft-packed sand his boots sink down on every quicksand-like step, making his tread seem less bouncy and enthusiastic. He hits a particularly soft spot and steps down with a little too much force, getting his boot caught in the sandy hole it's made.

"Ah, c'mon!" he grumbles, trying to dislodge his foot to no avail. He twists and pulls but he's good and stuck. Then, with a sheepish grin, he says to Jo's back, "Little help here?"

She looks over her shoulder at him, rolling her eyes with no fond indulgence as she takes in his predicament. Moving away from the water with pointed, careful steps, she sticks out her hand to him. Gabriel just stares at the proffered appendage until she curls her fingers impatiently, a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, and she says, "You're the one who asked for the help. So, are you gonna take it or what?"

He exhales a breathy chuckle and shakes his head at the situation even as he's reaching out, hand closing around hers. A little tugging and pulling soon has Gabriel stomping free of the sand.

"Take lighter steps, genius," she quips, dropping his hand while he shakes wet clumps of sand off his boot.

In the silence that follows Gabriel assesses the surroundings, looking off into the direction Persephone had indicated before finally offering, "Should we get going?"

Jo frowns at the river. "Can we just, y'know, catch our breath for a minute? I think we've earned a break."

"Then, by all means, let's break," Gabriel replies, flashing her an easy grin as his legs give out beneath him. He drops to the sand like a sack of potatoes, landing on his ass and pulling his knees up so he can rest his arms on top of them.

Jo eases herself down onto the sand with considerably more care, keeping about two arms' length of space between them as she folds her legs Indian-style, back stiff and straight like she's about to meditate.

Gabriel gives the space between them an assiduous glance, casually remarking, "Y'know, I'm not gonna bite or anything." There's a beat where he pretends to give his words some thought and opens his mouth to amend the statement, but Jo gets there first.

"If you say something gross," she warns, "I will kick you in the face."

"At this angle?" His eyebrows telegraph faux astonishment as he pretends to stare at her legs with shameless, salacious amusement. "Bendy." His smirk turns into a pout when he doesn't get so much as an eye-roll out of her.

He squints at the foggy horizon and digs a shallow trench in the sand with the heel of his boot. "So, you're gonna stay mad at me forever?" he ventures. "Cause I gotta tell ya, speaking from some experience forever's an awful long time, Kiddo."

"Mad at you?" she echoes, a little incredulous because 'mad' is about as understatement as you could get about what she's feeling.

"I don't know what you want me to say," he admits.

"Then don't say anything."

Gabriel nods lightly, frowning a little as he reaches down between his boots and scoops up a handful of soot-coloured sand, letting steams of grit sift through his fingers.

"I did the right thing," he says softly, almost to himself.

"How about we don't do this right now?"

"I did the right thing," he says again, this time more sure of the words. "Be as angry as you want, but you can't tell me that I didn't do the right thing."

Jo's not about to sit here and be dragged into a conversation she doesn't want to have, so she gets up, saying, "We're not talking about this," as she brushes sand off her jeans and turns to walk away.

She makes it exactly three steps before Gabriel is on his feet, hand darting out to grab her wrist in a loose grip, forcing her back around to face him. Jo wrenches her arm free. "Don't," she warns in a growl.

Gabriel takes a step back, giving her a look that says he won't try to grab her again. He can see beyond the anger on her face and there's fear beneath her stern fury. His sympathy and understanding only lasts for about ten seconds though.

He squares his shoulders and straightens his posture, as if preparing for a fight, even as he turns his back and paces away from her a little.

"Look, way I saw it, we had two option back there," he says, holding two fingers aloft.

"Gabriel-" Jo's annoyed huff is cut off by an archangel on a tirade.

"Oh no," he snaps with terse, false levity, kicking a little sand over the trench he'd dug with his boot, "Sorry, but you don't wanna talk, remember? So now you get to just listen."

"Gabriel-" she tries again, only to again be interrupted.

"Two options," he repeats, oddly punctuating the point this time by holding up only one index finger. "Option A: you could run off and get yourself captured by those dicks, thereby saving exactly no one, or Option B: I stop you from making the biggest mistake since parachute pants. Now," he says, doing a dramatic turn on his heel—impressive given the sand, "call me crazy, but Door Number 2 seemed like a hell of a better choice to go with at the time. And what did it get us? Oh, nothing. Just you here in one piece, unmolested."

"Gabriel-"

"And I know," he sighs with a dismissive nod, "I know what you're going to say."

"No, you really don't."

"You're going to say that I should've come up with something better," he says sagely, solemnly conceding, "and okay, maybe you're right."

"No," Jo says. "I was going to say I'm stuck."

Gabriel blinks for a moment, considering the words. "I'm stuck," he repeats slowly, nodding. "Okay," he affirms, "what the hell are you talking about?"

In reply Jo waves a hand at the sand beneath her feet; or rather she would have done that if there had been any sand beneath her feet. Or feet at all, for that matter. Her denim-clad legs go down like two skinny fence-posts stuck in the sand, cutting her off at the ankles.

"I'm stuck," she says again, gritting her teeth as she tries to pull her boots free, only succeeding in bending her knees a bit.

"Oh," he hums, watching her for a moment as she struggles in the sand before offering, "You want some help?"

She pauses her efforts especially to glare at him. "No," she snaps, going back to trying to free herself. If she could only get one foot free she'd have some leverage, but she shifts and pulls and swears and none of it does any good.

"Ya sure?" he expectantly presses.

Jo groans, tries one last time to wiggle and twist and yank, and then relents. "…No," she grumbles petulantly.

Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Here, gimme your hand," he says, holding out both of his to her. They clasp hands like they're about to do some kind of dance step and he digs his heels into the sand a little to anchor himself, careful not to get himself stuck again while he's at it. He pulls one way, she pulls the other, and in the middle nothing happens.

"Well, Girly," he says thoughtfully, "you really don't do anything by halves, do ya?"

"My dad did always say go big or go home," she retorts.

"Yeah? How's that working out?"

"At the moment? Not so great," she says, conversational despite her quandary. "This isn't working," she announces, dropping his hands. "This crap's like rubber cement!"

Gabriel nods and rubs a hand over his chin, thinking as he stares down at where her feet are firmly entrenched in the sand. In a moment there's a flash of something over his face, an idea has occurred to him.

"Here, lift your arms up," he instructs, offering a brief demonstration by holding his arms aloft like goalposts before he waves impatiently at her to mimic the movement.

Jo replies with a skeptical look and a, "Why?"

"I want to do a touchdown celebration but it requires a degree of realism so I need you to play the ref." He gives her a look. "If you don't wanna spend eternity as a potted plant, just do it."

Jo grumbles but raises her arms up above her head. Gabriel then proceeds to bend at the waist and grab her around her middle, draping her torso over his shoulder as if he's about to carry her like he's a farmhand and she's a sack of feed.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Getting you out," he grunts.

He lifts and pulls, using his own body as a fulcrum to pry her out of the sand. Jo comes free with a yelp, her sock-clad feet slipping out of her boots. The momentum from Gabriel's pulling sends her flying over his shoulder and, with the sudden loss of her body as a counterweight, Gabriel stumbles and falls back, his body oddly twisting like a corkscrew so he ends up crashing face-first into the sand.

"Ow," Jo groans, rolling over onto her back and staring up at the grey sky.

"Mmhfff," Gabriel agrees, still face-down in sand until he too rolls over with a weary groan.

"Thanks," Jo offers faintly.

"Hey, you got me out," he replies, brushing sand off his face. "Just returning the favour."

"No, I mean for…you know, the other thing. Back there, with the girl?"

"… Oh." He turns his head, looking over at her. "Anytime."

Gabriel opens his mouth to tell her that he would've done it for anyone, even if it's a lie, when she suddenly sits up, sand falling from her hair, and crawls the short distance over to her buried boots. She sinks her fingers into the sand around them, digging them out, freeing one and then the other and clapping their soles together to shake the sand off them. Reaching inside one of them, she pulls her knife from its sheath, looking it over for unlikely damage.

"Sooooooooo," he says, stringing out the word so far that it nearly falls off an imaginary cliff, "Are we good now?"

Jo looks down at the knife in her hand. He could have left her stuck in the sand, but he didn't. He could have let her run out and save that girl while he and Persephone made a run for it, but he he didn't. Jo looks down at the knife in her hand and thinks that maybe some risks aren't so risky after all.

Decision made, she flips the knife so that she's holding it by the blade, offering him the handle. He stares at it, obviously not getting it.

"Harakiri?" He guesses.

"Not exactly," she smirks. She shakes her head, pushing the handle closer in offering. "I need to trust you," she says.

Gabriel's eyes narrow as they stare into hers like he's trying to read especially small letters printed on her eyelids. Realisation lights in his eyes, "You're serious."

"I'd say deadly except at this point it's kinda redundant," she retorts. "But if you don't want to-" As she moves to pull the knife back, he reaches out, grabbing the handle.

"No, I just…want you to be sure," he says pensively before switching gears and flippantly explaining, "A bond like this ain't like sacking Rome, Kid; it's not something you just do on a whim."

Brushing aside the odd analogy, she stares fixedly at him. "I need trust you," she says again, as if everything is just that simple.

He stares back at her for a long moment and then slowly nods. "Alright," he concedes and she lets go of the blade, giving him complete custody of her most prized possession. He knows that in itself is a big admission of trust for her.

"Gimme your hand," he enjoins.

Despite being the one to suggest doing this, Jo can't help hesitating, but he rolls his eyes and gives her such an imploring, daring look that she complies, holding out her hand to him. He takes it gently, turning it palm up.

Gabriel raises the knife, hovering the edge over her palm. His lips quirk in a way that belies his serious demeanour at this moment and he quips, "Just close your eyes and think of England." He draws the blade over her palm in one smooth motion, leaving a small welling line of dark charcoal in its wake. "Okay?" he asks, looking her over carefully, gauging her reaction.

"Not even a tingle," she says, staring at the wound in wonder. "It's not really numb, but it doesn't hurt."

Gabriel nods as if a suspicion of his has been confirmed. "It's this place," he says, motioning to their surroundings. "It's also why we're not beyond exhausted after walking about a bazillion miles through the forest." He grins at her and flips the knife, offering her the handle, "My turn."

Jo takes the knife with deft surety, cradling Gabriel's hand between her fingers as she runs the knife over his palm, cutting a shallow trench in his skin. His blood isn't as quick to spring as hers, but he says that it'll be enough.

He holds out his wounded hand to her and he doesn't have to tell her what to do; as if going for a handshake she takes his hand, palm to palm, their blood slicking together in the space between.

"Now for a little angel mojo to seal the deal," he says, closing his eyes and bowing his head, brow furrowed in concentration.

"Should I…do that too?" Jo asks uncertainly.

Gabriel cracks an eyelid, smirking up at her. "If you've got some cosmic whammy working that I don't know about then go for it"

She doesn't comment but the look she gives him says enough. He can see her patience is starting to strain so he closes his eyes again, sternly telling himself to focus.

For the first time since his Father created him and bound a piece of His divine glory within him, Gabriel actually has to work to try to tap into his Grace. It's harder than he'd anticipated; the Grace is there, brilliant and bright as ever, that eternal, smouldering spark of creation, but he can't get to it, like it's trapped behind a wall of bullet-proof glass.

"C'mon," he mutters to himself, trying to focus on that distant, muted hum deep inside that once screamed like a siren through every fibre of his being and warmed his insides like the heat from a thousand suns, but in a good way.

Like a match striking in a windstorm, or an ember of light he has to cup his hands around to protect, coaxing the spark into a flame with gentle breaths, he manages to skim the very edge of that feeling, to focus on the sound that—out of countless angels—belongs just to him. He grins with relief, basking in this tiny, nearly infinitesimal piece of himself that's locked so very far away now.

Gabriel clears his throat. "Usually this ritual is for initiating new angels into their garrison, to bond them to their brothers," he explains. "So, I'm gonna have to tweak it a little cause you're sporting a nasty case of humanitis. Ordinarily it's supposed to go down in Enochian, the language of the angels, but the pronunciation has to be just right and since we can't put you through Rosetta Stone's conversational Enochian course, I think the Latin translation'll work for our purposes. You do know Latin, right?"

She shrugs, "Sure, a little." Every hunter worth their rocksalt knew at least the basics.

Again he clears his throat, but this time when he speaks the voice that comes out isn't like the one she's used to hearing: that kind of lazy, playful voice, his words sometimes running together in a rustic drawl that makes it sound a little like he's attempting a half-assed Elvis impression.

This new voice is a voice of power and resonance, the voice of a Holy Archangel of Heaven, complete with the capitalization. This voice is deep and clear, enunciating every word with careful consideration that is so practised, there's not so much as a pause of breath between one word and the next. But aside from being just precise, it's also rich and commanding, compelling. It draws her attention to the words, creating a driving need to comply.

"Per istum gladium ego sanctifico sanctis coniunctionis nostrae potestatis. Ecce, nos unum sumus (1)," he says, holding her knife in one hand and her bleeding hand in the other.

Despite her line of work, Jo was never an avid reader of the bible, never much for theology, but she knows enough from flipping through the old tome perched on the Harvelle family bookshelf to know that Gabriel was supposed to have been God's messenger; and this is the voice of a messenger. Send this voice to her with God's bidding and she'd raise a knife to her only child, build arks, or languish on a cross for the sins of all mankind, and what's more, she'd do it a thousand times over.

"Omnes ego do vobis. Omnes te accepi. Sanguis tuus meus est. Sanguis meus est tuus (2)."

As he says the words, he anchors them with the bit of his Grace that he manages to hold onto. It's kind of like trying to trap lightening in your hands and then taking it one absurd step further and trying to use that flash of raw energy to butter toast.

"Now comes the audience participation part," he tells her, his voice sounding more normal. "When you feel me squeeze your hand, repeat what I say; so listen close or we could both end up with hands growin' outta foreheads or somethin'. Got it?"

Jo nods, resisting the urge to roll her eyes and tell him that this ain't her first rodeo. As a hunter she'd recited all manner of weird, obscure Latin to evict demons and banish spirits, and even though this stuff seemed to come straight out of the advanced textbook, she was getting the gist of the ritual; a lot of junk about blood and partnership, trust and equity.

"Inter meorum numero te verumtamen existimo, perpetuom (3)," Gabriel slowly declares.

Something about counting numbers forever, Jo thinks.

There's a gentle pressure as he tightens his hand around hers. That's her cue. "Inter meorum numero te verumtamen existimo, perpetuom," she dutifully repeats.

As the last word leaves her mouth a flash of brilliant white light erupts from between their joined palms. Jo almost yanks her hand back because it feels a little like that time she and Ash were playing around with a tazer and he accidentally zapped her in the arm, but Gabriel's grip tightens and she rides it out, gritting her teeth as everything inside of her tightens like a coil.

Like a switch being flipped, it's over. The light, the electric energy, everything just goes still and quiet. It's so still and quiet that for a moment she wonders if she just imagined the light and the energy, like some kind of weird version of the placebo effect. Can rituals work that way?

And then Jo feels it; some new 'cough-and-you'd-miss-it' sensation somewhere deep in her gut, unlike anything she's ever felt before. It's a warm feeling, almost burning, like she just downed a fifth of scotch, but also a little uncomfortable, like someone's poking a finger at her insides. And it feels…bright, if that could be a feeling, and despite the fact that she'd nearly overlooked it, the more she focuses on the feeling, the bigger it seems to get.

She moves her unoccupied hand—the other is still trapped in Gabriel's—over the place where the feeling tugs at her and wonders aloud, "What is that?"

"Me," he replies. "You've got a pinch of angel's Grace super-glued to your soul now, Kid. Cool, innit?"

Jo's hand retreats from Gabriel's and he lets it go with only a moment of reluctance. She stares down at the wound in her palm that has inexplicably knit itself into a fine, pale line that resembles a six-month old scar. Still that needy, tugging feeling inside of her was growing, filling her up like a cup under a faucet. It suddenly occurs to her that she never really asked him about the specifics of the blood oath, what it would do exactly, and now she feels very, very stupid for that.

Gabriel assesses her expression, his natural ability to read her augmented by the new connection they've just forged. There's trepidation and uncertainty clinging to her like a soap-scummy film. "Bonder's remorse?" he chances.

She just shrugs, "I have no idea what any of this means."

"Yeah," he sighs, a little sheepish. "In all the excitement I sorta skipped over the 'You and Your Angel's Grace' pamphlet. I should've done the whole informercial thing before I got with the slice and dicing." He regards her with an odd mixture of patience and impish glee. "What do you wanna know? Ask me anything," he urges, assuring, "I can't lie."

"Really?"

"Nah, not really," he cheerfully admits. "I could lie to you all day long." Immediately Jo feels that tugging warmth in her stomach churn, making her mildly nauseous.

"See," he says, smirking at her grimace, wagging a finger at her expression, "That right there? That feeling? That's the lie." He grins wide, casually remarking,"You know who're a really underrated band? The Beatles."

Jo's stomach heaves. "Alright," she glowers, "I get it. Knock it off."

As she says this a flash of some emotion sparks alongside the tugging feeling in her gut. Unlike her usual emotions, this feels more matter-of-fact, apart, distant, but also sharp and clear as it ripples through her like an echo in a concrete tunnel. _This is fun_, the feeling sings, swiftly tempered by a bit of puckish amusement, a dash of pure enjoyment, a pinch of worry, and a flood of genuine affection, each one adding layers and contours to the feeling, making it feel candid and intricate.

How Jo knows the emotion doesn't belong to her is a little like how a bird knows that it's supposed to fly south for the winter; it's part biology, part common sense. If the emotion isn't from her, the only other person it could belong to is sitting in front of her, watching her with a happy sort of scrutiny.

"Did you just figure out that the meaning of life, the universe and everything is 42?" he smirks, "Cause you've got that kinda look on your face."

Despite his relaxed demeanour, beneath the surface there's trepidation curling along the amusement she feels from him, worry giving her the sensation of having just swallowed a handful of rocks.

"I'm alright," she assures, getting an arch of his eyebrows and a loose shrug in response. Jo's eyes narrow as she scans his expression. "How're you?" she asks carefully. "Do feel…alright?"

"Me?" he chuckles, leaning back on his elbows and closing his eyes against the brilliant gray sun that shines down on them, bathing the beach in ashen daylight. "Aside from most of my angel-voodoo being about as limp as an 85 year old jonesing for a viagra, all I need now is a gaggle of occupied bikinis, some steal-drum music and one of those slushy drinks with the little umbrella thingys."

"This isn't a vacation."

"C'mon, sand under our asses, no wars to fight, no apocalypse to avert, no Winchesters to whine at you about their feelings," he lists, breaking out the air-quotes for the last word. "How is this not a vacation?"

"Well, let's see," she pretends to think before countering with a list of her own. "There's the being dead part, the part where we were brought here by someone or something that probably doesn't have our best interests in mind, and then there's the little issue of roving bands of sinister rapists out to capture anyone they can get their hands on so an evil Nazi Doctor can torture their souls out. Doesn't exactly make you think Jamaican get-away."

"Have ya _been_ to Kingstown lately?"

"Can you be serious?"

"Can? Yes. Will? No." He scoffs. "You're plenty serious for the both of us, Skittles. I mean, take some time to stop and taste the rainbow. Don't you ever cut loose? _Unclench_?"

"I'll _unclench_," she sarcastically replies, "when we find my mom."

"Well then we better get to this Settlement place," Gabriel replies, rolling up onto his feet. Now standing, he offers her the same hand they used for the blood ritual. There's a fine scar along his palm that matches the one on hers, feint and pale like it has been there for a lot longer than a few minutes. "Wait too long," he taunts, "and we risk permanently breaking your sense of humour or something."

"Ha-ha," Jo intones sarcastically, reaching up to take his hand so he can pull her up, their scars slotting together between their palms, raised new skin against raised new skin.

For a moment something flashes in front of her, something she doesn't understand. It's hazy, like a mirage in the desert. There, sitting right in front of her on the sand, is a table of shining white marble, almost hideous in its exquisite craftsmanship and perfection. The snowy top is inlaid with a scrawl of some intricate, unfamiliar design and the busts of four marble-faced angels, arranged in pairs, back to back so that their wings join together, serve as the table's base.

Despite the table being odd for its hazy, dreamlike appearance, it is also a compelling sight because of the colour! Atop the table burns a red-orange fire, unaided by kindling or fuel. It's the first colour Jo has seen since her death and her eyes greedily soak up the varied nuances of every shade.

Within the churning colour of the licking flames she can make out four gleaming daggers made out of what looks like polished platinum, their glinting blades meeting together at the centre of the table. Just then four men appear around the table, each one taking a side, all four dressed like ancient warriors, their silver breastplates glinting off the flames. They stand like silent sentries, still and calm.

The man at the head of the table is tall and solid muscled, with jet coloured hair and broad shoulders; his back is to her so she can't see his face, but something tells her that he is wildly handsome. A silken cape of vibrant green enfolds his shining armours.

The man at the other end of the table is likewise compelling. He is also tall and broad shouldered, but his hair is cropped even shorter and flaxen like fresh straw drying in the sun. He has a straight, pointed nose, a prominent brow, and about two days' worth of stubble shadowing his angular, square jaw. His thin, pale lips are skewed in a way that gives him a perpetual arrogant sneer and his eyes are an incredible shade of cerulean that matches the cloth draped around his breastplate.

The third man is of average height with skin the colour of roasted coffee. He's handsome like the other two but in a neutral, passionless way. There's something about him that seems unsettling, harshly antiseptic, reminiscent of the uncomfortable sterility one usually only finds in hospitals. His cloth is yellow.

Jo recognises the fourth man. He bears a red standard, is smaller than the other three and arguably less handsome, but no less magnetic. His eyes, the first time she's seem them as anything other than grey, are a seemingly impossible colour; not exactly green and not exactly brown, not even hazel, but a warm, honey colour that encompasses all three.

It's Gabriel, but not exactly. He's too serious, too cold, too still. There's something missing in him, some inexplicable absence that makes him simultaneously himself, but not.

Together, the four move like a flock of birds, extending their hands out towards the centre of the table, unharmed as each hand passes through the flames to take hold of a sword. Four echoing voices chant together, sounding a little like a record being played backward on a turntable, "Lodnah od yo-ee-ad!"

Gabriel, gripping his shining sword, suddenly turns his gaze to Jo like she has just appeared in his vision and not the other way around. Golden eyes boring into her with surprise and confusion, he opens his mouth to speak... and promptly disappears. His three companions, their swords, and the table all likewise blink out of existence, leaving a long stretch of grey uninhabited beach in their place.

Gabriel, looking like his normal jocular self, has let go of her hand and is trudging away from her up the beach. He stops and turns back when he realises that she isn't following, his grey eyes meeting hers. "You comin?"

Jo nods and starts after him, resolving to ask him about it later and telling herself that she isn't disappointed to see him look at her again with dull, colourless eyes as opposed to ones that burn spectacular gold, even though it makes her chest ache just a little to think about it.

It doesn't take them long to find the boat, but once they do, Jo has to wonder if there's been some kind of mistake. There's nothing else in the area that could be possibly be used as a form of transportation across the river, just sand, sand, more sand, and some water, and then this thing, half-stuck in the beach like it's been waiting for them a little too long.

"That's it?" Jo says, incredulous as she stares at the 'boat' they're supposed to take to the Settlement.

Her incredulity is prompted not only by the rough shape of the vessel, but also the very construction of the craft. It's not so much a boat as a raft made of planks of wood bound together with rope-twine, sitting on the beach like a trap door, half covered in sand.

"Jeeze, where's that chick from Titanic? Somebody better tell 'er she lost her door," Gabriel dryly comments.

"You think it's safe?"

Gabriel shrugs. "Seaworthy or not, this is what we get," he says, trying to be positive about the disaster of a crossing that no doubt awaits them. He ambles over to one side of the raft, reaching out with a booted foot and kicking some sand off of it. "The S.S. _Pathetic_," he declares brightly, turning to her, "What d'ya think?"

"How about the _Deathtrap_," she counters, nodding to indicate a bit of frayed twine on the starboard side. "We're gonna drown on this thing."

"Nah," he declares, somehow managing to give the word more syllables than is strictly necessary. "We'll be fine," he assures. "We're dead already, remember? What's the worst that can happen?"

Jo arches an eyebrow. "With our track record, you really wanna go there?"

He snorts and motions to the craft. "Just help me launch this marvel of nautical construction, will ya?"

Between the two of them they manage to dig the raft out of the sand and find the tow rope for the thing, each of them taking hold and tugging the weathered timber down to the waterline.

"Well, it floats," Gabriel points out optimistically as the raft bobs in the shallow surf.

"So did the _Minnow_ in the beginning," Jo wryly replies, taking off her jacket and wrapping her boots in the garment, setting the bundle down on the raft as she wades into the water, "and look how that turned out."

"Tragic," he nods with faux sympathy, slipping out of his own jacket. "Stuck on an island with Ginger and Maryann. Decisions, decisions."

"Mind outta the gutter, Gilligan," she retorts, easily catching his jacket when he tosses it over to her, setting it down on the raft beside hers.

He smirks at her from where he's climbed onto the raft to look over the bindings. "Jealous?"

"Ha!"

"And for the record," he says, plucking furtively at a loose segment of twine around one of the raft's bindings, "if I'm anyone from Gillian's Island, it's the Professor."

Jo grins wryly, "You do know that the Professor was gay, right?"

"Mmmm…" he frowns in contemplation and tilts his head like he doesn't really believe her. "Must've missed that episode."

"Oh, he was totally digging the man-love," she asserts. "Think about it, there he is, stuck on an island with that skank Ginger throwing herself at him every time the wind shifts and what does he do? He ignores her to go off and build a radio out of a coconut or make explosives outta fucking sand. Add to that the fact that he had way more chemistry with the palm trees than with any of the girls on that show and you've got yourself a gay Professor."

"You've really put a disturbing amount of thought into this."

"Everybody has hobbies," she quips. "So, are we ready to go?"

"Just about," he says, sitting down and shucking off his boots, setting them beside their jackets. "Hop on and I'll push us out."

"Hop on?" she puzzles. "I'm already out here. Why don't you stay there and I'll push us out? That is if your fragile male ego can handle it?"

Gabriel rolls his eyes and swings his legs over the side, slipping off the raft and into the water beside her, soaking his jeans up to his knees. He smirks at her, drolly replying, "Yay feminism and everything, but I'm just trying to push a freakin' boat into a river here, not incite a Limbo chapter of women's lib. You wanna help? Great. Grab a side and let's get shovin', Cupcake."

Together they push the raft out until the water reaches above their thighs, climbing on top of the craft and settling beside their boots and jackets. Sitting there, Gabriel has a sudden realisation.

"We forgot paddles," he says. "Do you think they were buried somewhere by the raft?"

"No," she shakes her head, "I dug around and didn't find any." Jo waves a hand at the water,"I don't think really we need 'em anyway."

There was a current, slow but with definite direction. Little by little the river was dragging the raft out towards the wall of pea-soup fog that separated one side of the Acheron from the other.

"Yeah, but if we keep things going like this," Gabriel pretends to look at a watch that isn't on his wrist, "we won't make it to the other side before the Last Judgement!"

"Patience is a virtue," she reminds him.

He grunts. "Just so you know, I lobbied against that."

"Good for you," she says around a wide yawn. "You're the one that wanted to treat this like a vacation, remember?"

"Yeah," he drawls and then, because yawns are contagious, he pauses over one of his own. "Yeah, but that was back on the beach when doing nothing was relaxing. This is like being stuck on a slow boat to nowhere."

"Technically, this _is_ a slow boat to nowhere."

The raft slips through the first layer of fog and for the first time there's a smell to the air. It's fresh and earthy, like ozone. It's also a little cold, the temperature dropping as they drift further and further out. Her wet feet are freezing now so she digs her boots out from her jacket and jams them on her feet for warmth. Gabriel doesn't seem to care about the temperature though and remains barefooted.

"This stuff's pretty thick," Jo remarks, waving a hand through the fog and watching as it swirls around her fingers, creating spirals and shapes.

The water undulates and laps against the wood planks of the raft, creating a sloshing sound that's soothing, lulling. Jo's mind begins to drift with the raft, her thoughts manifesting like the water, transient and lazy.

"I'm saaaaailling awwwwaaay," Gabriel starts to sing. "Set an open course for the virgin seeeeeaaaa."

"Really?" Jo groans. "You're really going to start that again?"

"Cause I've got to be freeee, free to face the life that's in front of meeeee."

"I really hate that song," Jo confides and then, just as an experiment, she tries to project a thread of negative emotion through their bond.

Gabriel instantly relents. "Okay, okay, no Stix. Got it."

He falls quiet, staring at her intently like they've just met for the second time in their lives and he's trying to remember her name. It isn't long before she becomes a little uncomfortable with his scrutiny. She tries to use the bond to figure out what he's doing, but the only really vibrant emotion she manages to pick out is the usual, ever-present curiosity that seems to be as integral to Gabriel as the underlying mischief, joviality and grief that mix together in a strange cocktail to make up his normal, baseline of emotion. The background noise that's always there.

"What?" she prompts.

"Nothing," he says, still staring at her for a moment before blinking, shaking his head. "Just…nothing. Never mind."

"No," she presses, "what is it?"

"I'll tell you later," he says, staring out at the water.

"Tell me now," she says. "We're not doing anything right now."

"Did you see that?" Gabriel suddenly interjects, leaning his head over one side of the raft and peering down into the water.

"Don't even try that," she chastises. "You can't distract me with some bullshi-"

Jo's cut off when the raft suddenly pitches wildly to one side, water rushing up onto the platform where they're seated before the craft rights itself again, leaving both Jo and Gabriel to dig their fingers into the rope-bindings closest to them.

"What the hell was that?"

Gabriel reaches out, his hand closing around her upper arm. Before Jo would've protested at this, but with the unsettled feelings she's getting from him, she understands that it comes out of his concern and this strange intrinsic need he has to protect her. The feeling is muddled and a little confused, even with the clarity she receives from viewing his feelings from the outside, so she sort of has a feeling that he doesn't even really realise he feels this way.

"At the risk of sounding like an extra from Jaws," Gabriel says with foreboding, "I think there's something in the water."

The raft rolls again like the river beneath is trying to buck them out, pitching the craft above the surface and sending it crashing back down again.

"It's underneath us!" Jo cries, fingers digging even tighter around the rope bindings that are creaking loudly with every tip of the raft.

What happens next happens so quickly that to Jo it only looks like a dark blur. Something long and black, about the size and width of a giant fire-hose, snakes up out of the water and wraps itself around the middle of the raft. The thing contracts, lengths of muscle rolling beneath a layer of shining, obsidian scales and then there's a terrible cracking sound as the raft splits in half, breaking apart like a cracker being crushed in someone's fist.

Gabriel has just enough time to shout, "Women and children first!" before he pushes her off the raft and into the water, diving in after her as the raft dissolves into floating sticks and scraps of twine.

The water gulfs around them, so cold that it feels like a million tiny needles, burning every bit of exposed skin. Disoriented by the first extreme sensation she's had since arriving in Limbo, Jo instinctively opens her mouth to gasp and icy water floods down her throat. She struggles against the burning race of liquid down to her lungs, her automatic response to try and cough up the water resulting in even more flooding in, and as she does this she forgets the most important part about swimming; the not sinking part.

Meanwhile Gabriel swims to the surface, draping himself over the remaining floating scraps of the raft, head swiveling this way and that as he searches for Jo. He's about to dive under again to search her out when, on the other side of the splintered plank he's clinging to, a head of light-coloured hair breaks the surface. Jo coughs and sputters as her hands claw at the water, trying to keep her head above the surface.

"Here!" he says, holding out a hand to her, "Over here!"

Jo reaches out, grasping his hand as he draws her closer to the plank, helping her wrap her arms around it so she doesn't have to work so hard to stay afloat.

"You okay?" he asks her and gets a shaky nod from her in return. He chuckles a little out of relief more than humour, remarking, "Thought you were a goner for a second there."

"C-cold," she shudders.

"Jesus fuck, you ain't kidding!" he swears, able to fully appreciate just how cold the water is now that he's not worried about her being halfway to the bottom of the river. "Any colder and my future children are gonna be snowmen. But at least we're still-"

He suddenly slips from the plank, his head disappearing below the water as the thing from before wraps itself around one of his legs and drags him under.

"Gabriel!" Jo cries, pushing away from the board and diving under the water after him. Despite the freezing water, it's clear and easy to see through when she opens her eyes blow the surface, searching for him.

The creature's twisting black serpentine body has snaked up Gabriel's leg and around his torso, strangling the air out of him as it drags him lower and lower towards the dark abyss where there may or may not be a river bed.

Gabriel beats and claws at the enormous snake, fingers sliding along slick dark scales as he tries in vain to pry it off. Jo swims after them and when she's close enough she reaches into her boot, grabbing her knife. She kicks her legs hard against the water, gaining momentum enough to slam herself into Gabriel and the serpent, slashing at scales and carving into tightened muscle.

The archangel's mouth opens and closes like a fish, his eyes bulging wide; no more air. Jo slashes out with the knife and rams it into one of the serpent's glinting ruby-coloured eyes, the blade finding purchase in the now spongy, socket of red-black mush. The serpent loosens its grip a little but still has Gabriel in a stranglehold. Jo pulls the knife back and brings it down over the other beady red eye, blinding the creature, but in retaliation the serpent's grip only tightens again.

With her lungs burning from lack of oxygen and Gabriel looking like he's about to pass out, Jo's last ditch effort involves wrapping both legs around Gabriel's hips, pinning the snake between their bodies. She raises the knife in her hand and Gabriel, seeing where she's going with this, fanatically shakes his head 'no', eyes wide. Jo pauses to nod at him, looking him straight in the eye as she sends out a feeling of reassurance through their bond, eventually getting a reluctant acquiescence back in return.

Using one hand to shove the serpent's head against the archangel's chest, holding it still, she uses the other to wield the knife, hastily sawing through scale and muscle and around bone with hacking, jagged swipes. Blood billows out from the snake's wounds like cumulous clouds of a storm, fogging the water around them, but Jo keeps her knife moving, relying on feeling and instinct to keep from cutting too deep and into Gabriel.

She doesn't stop until the water clears enough to see that the serpent's head now hangs loosely by a thin flap of scaly skin. The twisting body jerks and twitches once, twice, and then releases Gabriel, its nearly decapitated corpse floating away, sinking down into the dark abyss below. She flails a hand out and finds Gabriel's sleeve, tugging at him once to get moving as she kicks her feet. He does the same and then they're both clawing at the water to get to the surface.

Their heads break the waterline with wet, gulping gasps for air, Jo's lungs on fire and her heart pounding wildly against her ribcage. Gabriel snags an arm around nearest available scrap of the broken raft, their breath escaping in ragged pants as they drape themselves over the piece of waterlogged wood, Gabriel on one side and Jo on the other.

"What the…the hell was that?" Jo gasps, swiping wet locks of hair out of her face. "Did you see the _size_ of that thing?"

"Eh…I've seen bigger," Gabriel says in a wheezy rasp and Jo can't help the rising, half-crazy feeling of hilarity that bubbles up between them as a streak of hysterics.

"How can you think that was funny?" she manages to get out through gulps of their laughter.

"C'mon," he chuckles, "we were just attacked anaconda style! Admit it, that was kind of awesome."

"You almost died!"

"Already dead," he retorts, slapping some water at her.

"Could've been eaten," she rejoins in the same tone, slapping water back at him and challenging, "You don't know what would happened to you then."

"I had him," Gabriel protests. "I was about a second away from making that thing my bitch when you showed up."

"Okay, so next time it looks like you're about to be ripped in half by a giant snake I'll stand back and just let that happen."

He nods, "I don't think it's too much to ask."

"You're messed up, you know that?"

He grins proudly at her but then frowns and tilts his head, sort of like a dog would. "Do you hear that?"

Jo's expression is stern. "Okay, you need to stop saying shit like that," she says tersely, eyes a little wild and wide, "because every time you say shit like that, something terrible happens!"

"How is that my fault? It's not like I'm causing it," he points out.

Jo frowns, listening. "What is that?" It sounds like the roar of an audience applauding wildly, their clapping echoing off the walls of a giant theatre.

The current has picked up and Jo waves a hand in front of her face, watching as the mist hanging low over them swirls and then thins. With each passing second she can see a little easier through the rolling, whirling wall of white. Soon she can even make out hazy, shadowed outlines in the distance.

"I think I can see the other side," she tells him.

"What?" Gabriel cranes his head over the board, "Where?"

"See those dark spots over there?" She points through the fog,"I think those are trees."

"Great, more trees," he intones sarcastically, " 'Cause those are something we haven't seen before."

They're hit by a slosh of water as they drift into a rip current that appears out of nowhere, the sudden increase in speed and rough water tossing their board around like a rag-doll with two smaller rag-dolls hanging on by their little rag-doll fingernails. After a moment the tide becomes a little less violent but they maintain the speed the new current brings, swiftly pressing them on through the fog.

"Hey, we're really moving now!" Gabriel exclaims, his voice rising as the clapping sound gets louder. "I tell ya, I think our luck's changing!"

And then he spots it over Jo's shoulder.

The water shimmers along a tangible horizon in the distance as a large splinter of wood from their broken raft is washed over the line where the clouded sky meets the river, and then disappears. This happens again and then two more times and Gabriel, taking into account the ever-increasing clapping noise, puts one and one together and comes up with an appropriate statement to express their current situation:

"Uh-oh."

At this Jo groans, wearily professing, "I hate you."

Distracted, he nods loosely, still focused on the view over her shoulder, the way the clapping has become a rumbling roar, and the increase in the speed and turbulence of the water around them. "Uh-huh."

"Don't tell me," she blandly murmurs, sounding almost bored, "we're about to go over a huge waterfall."

"Yep."

"Sharp rocks at the bottom?"

"Most likely."

Jo gives a stiff nod. "I hate you."

"And that's a topic we can discuss a little later, Cocopuff," Gabriel says anxiously, "but right now what we really gotta do is swim!"

With all the subtly of a finger jabbing into her side, Gabriel tries to persuade Jo to abandon the wreckage of the raft.

"That's not gonna help us," he tells her, shouting over the roar of the nearing waterfall. "We need to go for the shore, at an angle, that way!"

Jo doesn't really want to let go of the board but Gabriel's convinced that holding on is the wrong thing to do in this situation and that conviction becomes a part of her as if she'd created the feeling herself.

It's an odd thing, her brain telling her one thing and everything else saying another. In the end she lets go because hanging on for dear death isn't exactly a plan and Gabriel's swim for the shore idea is as good as any other. But above all she lets go because she trusts him, and apparently it's the right thing to do because as soon as she lets go of the board it gets swallowed up in a whirlpool of rapids, cracking in half under the constant barrage of whitewater, the pieces disappearing beneath the froth of foaming surf.

They swim for what seems like forever, arm over arm, rapids beating against them, over them as they're swept further and further down the river, the shore seeming to never get any closer. Exhaustion is starting to set in and Jo's strokes become looser, less co-ordinated, and Gabriel isn't so much swimming anymore as trying to beat the river in submission.

And then, finally, they make it to the other side…only to find that the way forward is impassible.

The river has washed them down to a bend where, instead of tiding onto a riverbank, the water pounds itself into a slate rock-face, a literal wall that rises five or six feet from the waterline. Gabriel and Jo are swept against it, pushed along it, unable to find a foothold to pull themselves up out of the river.

"Oh, come _on_!" Gabriel shouts, around a mouthful of water, slamming his palm flat against the rock-face. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me!"

Jo, struggling against the current right alongside him, is a little more lucky, managing find a narrow groove in the crag and wedge her hand into the tight space.

"Here!" She calls, quickly throwing out her other hand to Gabriel. He latches on to her arm like it's a life preserver and the added weight and pounding current thrashing water against them nearly snaps her arm like a twig.

The pads of her fingers feel like they're pressing down to the bone as she fights to hold on, muscles and tendons in her hand and forearm protesting. The strain only increases as she frantically searches for another crimp further up the wall, hoping to maybe try to free climb the embankment to get out of the river. Sadly, no other handhold presents itself and the burning muscles in her arms are screaming at her now.

Her hold begins to slip, fingers straining along the lip of the crevice as their fleshy undersides bite into rock. "I'm slipping! I'm slipping!" she says in breathless, panicked refrain, as if announcing it aloud could prevent it from happening.

"No, you're not! No, you're not!" Gabriel chants back, gripping her arm tightly. "Listen," he continues, practically shouting against her ear over the roar of water, "I don't want to alarm you or anything, but we don't have a whole hell of a lot of river left, here! You slip and we're goin' over Niagara before you can say, 'we're totally fucked'!"

Jo only has to glance back over her shoulder to confirm what he says. They're about thirty feet away from the precipice of the falls; if she were to let go at this precise moment, they'd have all of maybe six seconds before being swept over.

Logically she understands that they're already dead and the fall won't kill them, but it's hard to let go of that mortal sense of self-preservation, that need to step back from the edge of a cliff rather than go jumping out over it because, hey, maybe you can fly? Gabriel, however, is a different story. He's spent his entire existence with the secure knowledge that, not only can he fly, he can decide where the cliff goes, how high it is, or even if exists at all.

Jo's fear of going over the falls is sharp, acute, instinctual. In contrast Gabriel's fear ripples through the bond as background static, indirect and unfocused. It's an echo, she realises. He's worried about going over because she's worried about it, and with good reason.

"I can't-" the words 'hold on' are lost in a gasp as her shaking fingers loose purchase against the edge of the crevice, blindly groping through empty air as they try to recapture their grip on the rock.

Jo and Gabriel are falling backward, back into the river to be thrown over a clamouring waterfall in a manner of seconds. In that half-moment she even resigns herself to this fate just as they jerk to a halt, suspended mid-fall when something snatches at Jo's arm.

"I've got ya," croaks an unfamiliar voice above their heads, warm and reassuring. Jo looks up and there's a man dangling above her head. He's hanging over the edge of the rock-face, outstretched toward her as he holds her by the arm.

"C'mon," he grunts, the muscles in his tanned arm straining like flesh-covered extension cords, "I'll help you up if my friend Edgar here can be bothered to give us a hand!"

"Yeah, yeah," a second unfamiliar voice grunts and another man appears over the side of the rock, this one a few decades older, maybe in his early to mid forties, and more haggard looking with heavy bags beneath his dark eyes. He's cinched up in a simple harness of rope which clashes oddly with the dark, nicely tailored suit he's wearing, but which also allows him to descend further down the rock-face towards them, as opposed to the hanging-by-your-feet method the first guy is employing.

Joining them at roughly the same place along the rock, Edgar extends a hand to Gabriel, but Gabriel waves him off, jerking his head over at Jo. "Her first."

"Don't you worry about your lady friend," the first guy replies, grinning down at Gabriel, "She's in safe hands."

Gabriel opens his mouth to object, pointedly and with some colourful expletives, but Edgar extends his hand again. "It'll be easier if we're both up there to pull them up," he reasons.

Apparently this seems reasonable enough to Gabriel because the waterlogged archangel reaches up and and clasps Edgar's hand, allowing the middle-aged suit with the crooked, mustached scowl to pull him up to the rope.

They ascend hand over hand, Gabriel first followed by Edgar, until they make it to the top, rolling over the edge of the cliff onto hard-packed dirt. Now on top of the rock-face, Gabriel can see that two ropes are anchored around a nearby tree, one loose and leading to the knotted tether around Edgar and one pulled taught and disappearing over the edge.

"Give me a hand here," Edgar murmurs, nodding at the other rope that disappears over the edge of the cliff.

Even with both of them pulling, it isn't short work getting Jo and Edgar's friend up the cliff. Once they reach a certain height, Jo practically scrambles up the guy like a tree, clawing her way over the edge of the cliff and then turning around and helping to pull their upside-down savior up the rest of the way. With all four of them safe and sound now on top of the cliff, Gabriel abandons his rope tugging duties to go over and offer Jo a hand, helping her to her feet. Edgar soon follows suit with his own friend, though the other man waves him off and climbs to his feet unaided.

"Well, thanks. You…ah…ya really helped us out there," Jo pants through gulps of air. The whole event has worn her out beyond measure and feels like she could drop right where she stands and sleep for about a decade.

"Don't you think on it, Miss," the not-Edgar guy replies with a saccharine, aw-shucks grin.

"We were down at the dock but got ourselves up here when we heard the commotion. Sure enough, there you were," Edgar explains.

"Good thing we came along in time, too," his companion adds. "Last thing you want is to go over the falls on your first day! What a waste!" He lets out a bark of laughter like he thinks the idea is absolutely absurd.

Now that they're all upright and not dangling from a rope over a cliff, Gabriel gets a better look at the man who scooped them out of the river…and instantly decides he's not a fan. Standing a full head and a half taller than Gabriel, the guy's like a poster boy for the all-American young twenty-something; lithe and lean muscled, square-jawed and toe-headed. He's a goddamned Abercrombie & Fitch model! He also radiates that sort of superior confidence that politicians and actors have, as if to say, '_I'm better than you and I know it, but aren't I wonderful to tolerate the rest of you?_'

"What my friend is trying to say," Edgar said, shooting the blond man an odd look before turning back to Jo and Gabriel with a thin but genuine smile, "Is welcome to the Settlement. My name is Edgar and this here is Aaron, our Deputy Sheriff. We're sort of like the welcoming party around here."

"So this is the famous Settlement, huh?" Gabriel replies, looking around doubtfully at a the trees and dirt scenery. "Not exactly as described in the brochure. Hell of a lot less people than I was expecting, I'll tell you that."

"Oh, no, this isn't _really_ the Settlement," Adam protests like a big dumb puppy, practically tripping all over himself at the change to explain something to someone. "We're about five minutes outside of town. This is the river."

"The _river_? You don't say," Gabriel sarcastically retorts, pointedly pinching a bit of his sopping wet shirt between two fingers and yanking it away from his body.

Jo watches him do this and sends the equivalent of '_play nice_' through the bond, earning a subtle eye-roll and a huff.

"Ugh!" Jo suddenly exclaims, tipping sideways a bit like the world's axis just decided to shift. She tries to reclaim her balance, her knees nearly buckling as a sudden rush of intense dizziness slams into her with all the force of an NFL runningback.

Gabriel extends a hand gentlemanly to her elbow, expression wary, but she smiles a little and gives a shaky laugh, as if to brush the whole thing off.

"You okay?" he asks anyway, sounding like he knows the answer should be 'no' but also knows that with her it will always be 'yes'.

Right on schedule she gives a humoured shrug and replies, "Sure, never been bet-" but she doesn't get to finish the platitude because she again bends like a reed, this time her knees buckling all the way.

What happens next is nothing short of cartoonish; her elbow slips right out of Gabriel's outstretched hand and she tips forward, diving right for the dirt, unconscious.

Gabriel frowns down at the sight of her, hand still extended as if holding onto an imaginary elbow, a little baffled by her very sudden and very literal dirt nap. His fingers slowly curl closed and he drops his hand, his gaze shifting up to the two strangers watching all of this with rapt attention.

"Is she okay? Is he hurt?" Aaron asks, peering down at the unconscious blonde.

Worried about Jo but unwilling to outwardly express that concern in front of these people, in typical Gabriel fashion he tries to make it all into one big joke.

"Oh, y'know," he hums lackadaisically, jerking a thumb down at his unconscious companion, "Just can't take this one anywher…uh…"

And just like that, Gabriel's hit with his own wave of dizziness. His knees buckle, and he drops, faceplanting into the dirt right beside Jo, just as unconscious.

Aaron sighs and then clicks his tongue thoughtfully, turning to the dark-haired man on his right, giving him a stern frown. "Edgar, run on into town." He turns his gaze back to the unconscious newcomers, "Tell Mr. Mayor we have some new candidates."

* * *

><p>(1) By this sword I sanctify the holy power of our union. Behold, we are one!<p>

(2) All I give unto you. All you have received. Thy blood is mine. My blood is yours.

(3) I count you among my number, forever.


	6. Chapter 5: My Heart Will Go On and On

**Author's Note:**

**Hi Guys!  
><strong>I'm back! Sorry about being gone for so long. Happy Easter. You can expect more soon! Enjoy this chapter and remember to review, please! Chapter Six should be coming very soon!

Oh, and you might be disoriented at first but don't worry. All will be revealed.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Five<strong>

**My Heart Will Go On...and On...and On Some More**

* * *

><p>It's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is partiuclarly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping - P.G. Woodhouse, <em>Carry one Jeeves<em>

History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse - Chuck Palahniuk, _Lullaby_

* * *

><p>"They might all be related? That's all we have to go on?"<p>

Julie looked like she was about to cry but that wasn't so unusual; Julie always looked like she was about to cry. "I know it's not a lot but-"

"_Not a lot_?" Jo echoed, forgetting for the moment that she probably looked like some kind of bitch-monster for yelling at a nice girl like Julie.

"I can surf the net some more," Trevor offered with his usual eager energy, already grabbing for the laptop he'd discarded on the coffee table. "See if I can't pull something off some of the more…out there occult boards."

Nate shifted uncomfortably beside him on the sofa, looking like he was about to protest. The rest of the group looked to the stony-face detective, waiting for him to voice his opposition. They didn't have to wait very long.

"Yeah, I don't think that's such a great idea," Nate grumbled, giving Trevor a side-long glance. "Last thing we need is another psycho web-witch sending you hex-bags in the mail."

"That happened one time," Trevor said, rolling his eyes at his more sensible other half.

"Yeah, and it's not gonna happen again."

In a lot of ways, especially at times like these, the two of them reminded Jo of some messed-up version of Sam and Dean, where the boys weren't so much brothers as a bickering gay couple.

Kyle broke through the boys' stare-off by speaking up from where he was leaning against the wall by the TV. "Maybe we should call your mom? Get her take on this?"

That was exactly what Jo _didn't_ want to do. Her mom had just left a few days ago after helping them out with their _last_ job and was probably almost home by now anyways.

"Not yet," Jo qualified rather than saying 'no' outright. "I don't want to get her or my Step-Dad involved until we've got something more than just…what we have."

Everyone else nodded their agreement and Jo gave them all an encouraging grin, struck once again by the profound weirdness that had conspired to make _her_ the one they all looked to for direction, like she wasn't just some upstart noob who was basically just ab-libbing this whole leadership thing.

"Trev, see what you can dig up online," she instructed, receiving a thumbs-up and a concise "Already on it!" from their usually more verbose computer whiz.

She addressed his stoical, scowling boyfriend next. "Nate, you should run down your contacts with other departments around the state, see if maybe your guys stumbled onto something we haven't yet."

The broad-shouldered cop gave a curt nod, already pulling his cellphone out and beginning to dial. If State or local law enforcement had any info on what was going on, Nate would have it within the hour.

Jo turned her attention to the girl curled around her own knees in the armchair by the fireplace. Julie had lost her family to a bunch of skin walkers almost a year ago—that was how she'd met up with their little rag-tag group of hunters in the first place—and she still wasn't quite done working through her grief yet. Sometimes Jo wasn't so good at remembering that until eleven months ago Julie was just a normal girl in college, happily unaware and untouched by things like monsters and demons.

Feeling bad for yelling at her earlier Jo approached her with kid-gloves this time. "Jules, I need you to hit the books again. Get creative. Look for anything involving gold thread. We'll also look into your theory, okay?"

The pale, willowy girl smoothed a few strands of short, dark hair behind one ear with a small smile, pleased to be given something to do. "Sure, okay."

Lastly Jo looked to Kyle who was—besides herself—the only one in the group who'd been raised in the life, a hunter by blood if not personal tragedy. "Watch the kids. Don't let them burn down the house," she teased, confessing, "I've gotta go get some coffee so I feel like a human being again."

As if to prove her words Jo swayed a little, the world going a little hazy at the edges. She kicked herself for yet again not getting enough sleep the night before.

Kyle frowned, his dark eyes following her as she turned and left the living room, heading down the hall towards the kitchen with heavy, sluggish steps.

"I'll be back," he told the others, moving to follow her, barely drawing any attention to himself due to the others' absorption with their assigned tasks.

He caught up with her in the hall, catching her by the arm as she nearly stumbled into a lamp. "Are you okay? You don't look so good."

Jo righted herself and shook his hand off, pushing a smirk at him. "Well, thanks. You really know how to make a girl feel special."

His lopsided frown deepened. "You know what I mean," he said, pressing the back of his hand against her forehead. "You're burning up. I think you're coming down with something."

Again she shook him off, this time replacing his gesture by winding her arms around his neck and grinning up at him. She hoped he'd ignore it if it all seemed a little forced. "Baby, I'm fine."

He didn't look convinced so she pressed the issue, "_Really_. It's probably just a stupid cold. I've been pushing it a little hard lately. I'll ease off. I'll be fine."

"You're not telling me something."

She dropped her arms from around his neck like they had lead weights attached, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "Oh, so now you're psychic?"

Kyle huffed and looked away from her for a moment, shaking his head. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Push me away."

"I'm not-" the denial stuck in her throat. "I'm just…"

This time it was Jo's turn to look away, thoughts and snippets of unexplainable things that kept her from sleeping at night running through her head.

"What?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. It's just- Don't you feel like something's _wrong_?"

Kyle heaved a great, resigned sigh. "And we're back to this."

"Look, I don't know _why_ I suddenly feel like this, but I do, okay?"

He stepped forward, taking her face into his hands, dark brown eyes looking deeply into hers, face set with frustration from what was quickly becoming an old argument between them. He kept his voice a quiet whisper to avoid being overhead by their friends in the other room. "It doesn't make any _sense_, Jo. We were fine less than three days ago. I don't understand what happened between now and then to make you think we shouldn't be together anymore."

All she could do was shake her head. Everything was so messed up and she didn't even know how it had happened. She'd been utterly and completely in love with him 48 hours ago. Then something had happened.

Jo had woken up two days ago, looked over at Kyle sleeping in bed next to her, and had felt…nothing, not even the echo of the warm, sappy feeling she usually got when she looked at him. He was her boyfriend, they'd been together for almost a year now, she was supposed to be in love with him, but she just suddenly wasn't.

It wasn't that she all of a sudden started to dislike him or anything. She still liked him well enough, even loved him in a way, like you would a close friend, but every time she thought about kissing him now it was like an obligation rather than a desire.

"I don't know," she said. "I really don't know."

There was a sad look of resignation on his face. "Well, why don't we talk about this again when you figure it out," he said tightly, turning back towards the living room and leaving her standing alone in the hallway.

Jo tried not to name the sudden feeling rushing through her because if she did, it would be called 'relief'.

"Well _that_ was awkward."

She tensed at the sudden intrusion of an unfamiliar voice, her hand instinctively going to the waistband of her jeans were she usually kept her sidearm, cursing when she found nothing there.

She turned towards the direction the voice had come, finding that it belonged to a man standing at the other end of her hallway. Mid thirties, he looked casual and relaxed, dressed in a pair of cargo pants and a blue plaid button down shirt over a white tee that said, **Worship Me** in big bold letters across his chest. He was a little short and kind of on the thin side, like he hadn't eaten well in a while.

He had tousled honey-colored hair and odd copper colored eyes. His otherwise soft features were sharpened by a pointed nose and a thin, small mouth that curved into a severe smirk as he lifted something pinched between this thumb and forefinger.

Her gun.

"Looking for this?" he said lightly, shrugging with self-assurance. "Yeah, I swiped it when you and tall, dark and bitchy there were having your _thing_."

"Who the hell are you?" she demanded.

He quirked an eyebrow at her before turning and sauntering off into the kitchen like he expected her to follow… like this was all so perfectly normal.

Jo looked back towards the living room, contemplating getting the others, bring them in to help her take care of this…whatever this was, but something stopped her. She found herself following him despite her better judgement.

She found him in the middle of her kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers, not like he was looking _for _something exactly, but looking just for the sake of looking. He had set her gun down on the counter by the sink like it was dirty cup waiting to be washed, putting it too far away for her to get to but also far enough away from himself to where it wasn't going to be a threat to her either. He smiled when he saw her, like he was impressed to see her there. Or maybe he was just impressed to see her there alone.

"You didn't call in the Scooby-gang. Good for you."

"Who _are_ you?"

He cocked his head and thought for a moment. "Right now? I'm not really sure."

He snapped his fingers and a cup of coffee appeared on the counter in front of him. She twitched towards the gun but made herself stay put as he slid the cup down towards her. She pointedly didn't take it, amending her previous question to him instead.

"Okay, _what_ are you?"

Her first thought was_ demon_ but the house was warded against those. He wouldn't have been able to cross their salt-lines to get in.

"Incredibly thirsty," he said and another cup of coffee appeared on the counter in front of him, this time with a spoon and a sugar dispenser, the glass kind you see in diners and crappy dives.

He turned the sugar over his cup, holding it there for five long seconds as the sugar rushed out and into the dark liquid. Finally he righted the dispenser, stirred the coffee around with the spoon, and took an experimental sip. He frowned and then grabbed the sugar again, dumping even more into the cup.

She stared at him, hard.

He set the sugar down on the counter and the glass container cracked and crumbled beneath his hand like it was made out of marzipan, spilling specks of white sand all over the place.

He at least had the decency to look contrite.

"Whoops." He chuckled a little, the sound a little awkward as he flexed the offending hand and confided, "Still gettin' the hang of this stuff."

"Well you better get the hang of an explanation before I decide to make your soon-to-be dead body into lunch meat."

"Okay, first? That is really dark. And second, you should be showing the love here sweetness because I'm your knight in shiny khaki."

"Thanks, that explains nothing."

"I don't' really have to tell you anything," he huffed. "In fact, I probably really shouldn't. I wasn't even supposed to let you see me. I was _supposed_ to just drop a bunch of big hints all over the place but this was just too good to pass up!"

She continued to stare at him like he'd just kicked something furry and cute.

"Okay, okay," he groaned. "Let's just say that I'm touring the timeline. A time-travel tourist. You don't have to worry. I'm not here to hurt anyone. In fact, I'm here to help you out and then go home."

"And home is…where?"

"Oh, here, there, a little bit everywhere."

"And you came to help me out?"

"Yep."

"Because…?"

He blinked. "Well, I guess because we know each other… or _will_ know each other. _Did _know each other?" he shook his head. "This is why Enochian doesn't have tenses."

"What?"

"Look," he setting down his coffee. "I'm here because I'm supposed to tell you that that _thing_ you've been feeling lately? Yeah, you should go with that."

"What?"

"Does your reality have that not-so-fresh feeling?" he said like the voiceover of a feminine hygiene commercial. "Well that's because you're in an alternate timeline."

"_What_?"

"_Alternate. Time. Line._" he said like she was challenged.

"Yeah, I heard you the first time. What the hell does that mean?"

"It means that someone who shall remain nameless jacked up the world and I've been sent here to clue you in, although I'm not really sure why. This place isn't so bad," he said, motioning to their surroundings but meaning something far more general than that. "I mean, I've had a _lot_ of fun here this past week. Learned some stuff, picked up some fun colloquialisms so I don't sound like a stilted asshat anymore, and…" his eyes practically glowed with glee, "_strip clubs_! I mean those places are awesome..." he shifted awkwardly, suddenly visibly uncomfortable, and added a little primly, "I mean, for immoral dens of inequity."

Jo huffed and pressed her fingers to her forehead where she could feel a headache forming, asking wearily, "So, how do we fix this…timeline thing?"

"Oh, _we_ don't," he replied. "_You_ do. I'm just the messenger. Besides, I have to get back. My return ticket is ridiculously non-refundable."

"Then what the hell was the point of telling me about this if you're not going to help me fix it?"

"Look, just keep on that gold-thread thing. You know, the accidents? I'm supposed to tell you that's the key. Oh, that and some _boat_ or something?" he shrugged into his coffee cup. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."

"Can't you give me a better hint or something? Aren't you from the future?"

"I didn't say that," he said, pointing an accusing finger at her, "I want that on the record. Besides, nothing's written in stone with this stuff, all right? I mean, you're not even going to remember this," he gestured at the space between them to indicate their interaction.

"Then what is the _point_?"

The way she saw it, despite that nagging feeling of wrongness she'd felt lately, he was essentially right, this timeline wasn't all that bad, and who's to say that the other one would be any better? In fact, chances were likely it was worse.

He shrugged again. "Hell if I know. Listen, I need to enjoy what little of my day-pass I have left so I gotta get going."

"Yeah," she snapped shortly, "I think you should go."

"Well, it's been fun. I guess I'll see you later…or sooner…or something," he said, throwing her another smirk before raising his hand, thumb and forefinger poised to snap. "You know what I mean."

"You know, I really don't," she retorted.

There was a snapping sound and Jo looked around the empty kitchen, trying to find what had caused it, finding nothing. Well, she _thought_ she'd heard something.

Jo reached down and picked up the cup of coffee she'd made for herself. She frowned. She couldn't really remember actually going through the motions of making the coffee, but she must have, right?

She gulped down a mouthful of her hot black coffee and nearly spit it right back up. Fuck, that was a lot of sugar! She took her coffee black so what made her add sugar today, let alone this much? She walked to the sink and dumped out the coffee, rinsing out the cup.

She really needed to get some more sleep at night. She was starting to go a little crazy.

* * *

><p>Gabriel was starting to go a little crazy.<p>

"What do you mean, _you don't know_?" he mocked, his voice hardened with a nasty twist of ire. "How do you not know?"

Edgar frowned and motioned at someone. A woman in her mid-forties peeled away from the cluster of younger women gathered around her and moved across the room towards them.

She was slender, with thin chestnut hair cropped just below her chin, a wan oval face beset with a pair of large, dark eyes and narrow eyebrows that arched high over her forehead. She had a stern countenance with thin lips and frown lines like valleys etched into her face.

"Sir," she addressed Gabriel concisely with the restraint of her English accent, "As I tried to explain earlier, my ladies and I have done an extensive clinical examination your friend and I'm afraid our results are inconclusive. In fact, there appears to be nothing physically wrong with her."

Gabriel's teeth grit together. "And she's doing the community theater production of sleeping beauty because…?"

The woman blinked. "We don't know."

"So I heard," he snapped, turning back to Edgar. "Isn't there anyone else here who can look at her? I don't know, a _doctor_ maybe?"

The woman bristled, her narrow mouth pinching into an ugly white line while Edgar sighed and shook his head. "We haven't had the services of a doctor in some time," he confided. "But rest assured Florence is as skilled and knowledgeable as any physician you'd care to meet."

Gabriel continued to frown, regarding them sternly for several long, quiet moments before finally declaring, "I want to see her."

Florence waved a hand towards her group of young women standing by the window in gauzy-white dresses and one of them stepped apart from the rest, a demure redheaded girl with pale skin and wide doe-eyes. The girl moved over to them, her hands folded primly in front of her as she presented herself.

"Charity," Florence said, "Please show our guest to his friend's room." The girl, Charity, all but curtsied to the stern-faced Florence as they left the parlor.

The girl led him down a hall and to a narrow staircase with mahogany bannisters and boards that creaked if you so much as looked at them. The house was old, built like a Victorian row-house, but was clean to the point of being almost antiseptic.

Two days ago Gabriel had awoke in a small room on the second floor, cocooned in an abundance of fresh, clean sheets and a whole lot of confusion. Edgar appeared before long and explained that he and Jo had been brought to the Settlement's Infirmary when they'd collapsed by the river. He'd left shortly after that, citing business he had to attend elsewhere, and Gabriel had spent the past two days being cosseted and passively subdued by Florence's army of white-clad attendants, trying to weed out any answers he could from them about Jo and receiving only demure platitudes and unhelpful reassurances from his caretakers.

It didn't take him very long to work out that they were keeping him in his room, his nurses cum wardens slyly locking his door behind them whenever they left. Today he had decided that enough was enough and had broken free from his "cell" when warden # 3 had brought in his breakfast tray. He'd pushed past the girl, making the tray clatter to the floor as he stamped down the stairs and screamed at a group of women gathered in the parlor until they were forced to call for Edgar, who had arrived shortly thereafter and explained that they had been stalling for time until they could discover why it was that he was awake and Jo was not.

"We were worried that you would react badly when you discovered the truth about your friend," Edgar had explained. "I'll admit we were hoping to make a better first impression."

Charity led Gabriel up four flights of stairs until they reached the top floor where there was a hall with rows of doors on either side. A stained-glass skylight spilled blue-tinged light through the corridor and made the flickering gas lamps affixed along the wall seem pointless. Charity passed three doors before stopping at the four on the left.

The door was unlocked and she motioned for him to enter first ahead of her. Beyond the door the room was practically identical to the one he'd been occupying for the past two days, white and impersonal with the sparse necessities of a bed, night stand, dresser and not much else. Lying in the white iron bed, her blond hair twisted into a braid that snaked against her neck, was Jo.

She appeared to be sleeping, her chest moving with the tide of her breath, her face still and serene, but Gabriel knew better. Seeing her now he knew why they hadn't been able to figure out what was wrong with her. There was no way they _could _know.

"She gone," he pronounced, shaken by the truth of his own words.

Charity's wide, stupid eyes settled on him. "I don't understand," she said. "This is your friend. I assure you there was no one else-"

His hand cut sharply through the air, waving off her words and demanding her silence. "No more talking!"

Gabriel stared at the motionless girl in the bed, his eyes seeing past flesh and bone and into the place where there should have been a swirling spark of light with a piece of his Grace pasted to it. But there was nothing, just absence. Jo's body was there, lying in that bed, but her soul, the very thing that made her who she was, most definitely was not.

"I want to talk to the person in charge."

* * *

><p>"This is her."<p>

Trevor maneuvered the laptop around on the coffee table so the screen faced the screen group. "Katie Thompson," he said, indicating a picture of a dark haired young woman. "She's a 19 year old sophomore at USC and according to her facebook profile she likes long walks on the beach and doing keg-stands."

He reached around the laptop and hit a button, bringing up another picture beside Kate's, this one of a blond guy and girl around the same age. "This is Jason and Jenna, Kate's older twin siblings. They also go to USC where they're Juniors. Two nights ago they were all in Jason's car going to a party off campus when they hit a pothole." Trevor hit another button and third picture popped up between the other two. This picture featured the twisted metal remains of a black Jeep Grand Cherokee that had flipped and smashed into a large oak tree. "Crash reports states that at the exact moment they hit the pothole the parking break somehow engaged. The wheels locked up and the car rolled off the road, smashing into a tree. Jason and Jenna were killed instantly."

"And Katie?"

At Kyle's question Trevor held up a finger, as if to impart something profound, "Walked away without a scratch."

"But all the other victims involved in multiple deaths…you know…_died_," Julie said timidly. This new incident didn't bode well for her theory about the victims being related.

"Are we sure this is even one of ours?" said Jo, looking to Nate.

The cop nodded. "Called and spoke to the officer on duty the night of the crash. Forensics recovered gold thread at the scene."

"They don't really look alike," Julie said, staring at the pictures on the screen.

Trevor blinked. "Well, no. They're fraternal twins, not identical."

"No, she's right," Jo slowly agreed, studying the photos. "They couldn't look any less related if they tried."

Katie had long dark hair, brown eyes and a light olive complexion while her older brother and sister sported blond hair, blue eyes and pale skin.

"Do some more digging," Jo ordered. "I want to know more about them."

Trevor looked a little confused by the request but shrugged his acquiescence, grabbing the laptop and setting back to work. "You got it."

Jo nodded and was about to leave when something occurred to her. "And find out if the Thompsons have a boat."

"A _boat_?"

* * *

><p>"Well, it was more of raft than a boat," Gabriel explained, recounting the story of their journey to the Settlement as he and Edgar walked through town.<p>

Edgar had asked him to think back and try to remember if there was anything that could have caused Jo's strange condition. Gabriel decided to leave out the whole part where Jo was apparently soul-challenged at the moment, but didn't see any harm in relaying their sojourn to the Settlement, also carefully omitting any and all references to angels, existentially depressed Hellenistic goddess and the like.

"And then we ended up here with you nice folks," he summed up tersely, managing to keep his acerbic sarcasm on a low simmer.

He didn't know what he'd been expecting to find at the Settlement but some kind of pilgrim movie set-design reject wasn't it. The whole place had that sort of pastoral can-do vibe he remembered from watching all those colonial tri-corned asshats pour outta their ships and onto the shores of the new world to make a go of it, natives be damned. It was…_quaint_.

There was a main thoroughfare that cut through the center of the village, an unpaved, gravel strewn lane with shops and residences crowding against each other and up to the edge of the road. The street dead-ended at a large, white spired building that Edgar, without any hint of irony, informed him was the Church.

"You're welcome to join us for services tonight," he'd said.

Gabriel grimaced, "I think I'll pass."

As it turned out the "person in charge" Gabriel had requested to see wasn't so much "person" as people, specifically a council of people according to Edgar. The Settlement's elders comprised the membership of The Council, which from the way Edgar explained it was the major governing body and voice of authority in these parts.

"They will know what to do."

Gabriel hesitated to share Edgar's optimism. In his experience authoritative bodies like The Council usually did more harm than good.

Besides the Church, the Council Hall was the largest building in the Settlement; it was also the most architecturally impressive, resembling a small, Greco-Roman rotunda with limestone Doric columns lining the exterior. Gabriel could tell by comparison with the other buildings in town that it was the oldest structure there, predating everything by at least a couple hundred years.

Edgar paused as they reached the steps of the Council Hall. He smiled his regret to Gabriel. "I leave you here," he said. "Outside parties are not permitted inside for the hearing of a grievance." He motioned across the road to a small, dark building, "You'll find me there when you've completed your business. I'd be happy to return you to your friend should you find yourself in need of direction."

Then Edgar offered his hand to shake and the two men parted ways.

Gabriel ascended the steps like Rocky, jogging up the relatively short set with a bouncing gait and skidding to stop before the massive bronze entrance doors. They looked heavy and without the confidence of supernatural strength backing him he wasn't too sure he could get them open with just sheer force of will and some good old fashioned elbow grease.

He was saved the trouble of finding out when the door peeled open with a grinding squeal and a uniformed man scowled out at him through the opening.

"The Council is expecting you," the scowling man announced flatly.

If he was trying to instill a sense of ominous dread with his words, the effort was wasted on God's Messenger. Gabriel had spent eons perfecting the delivery of ominous dread as the chewy-center to the almighty word of God. Some dour gloom-and-doom footman wasn't going to rattle his cage.

"That's nice," Gabriel said with a dismissive wave of his hand when the guy moved to escort him across the room. "Lemme guess, it's this one?" he gestured at the only other door in the entry hall.

He left the scowling footman standing in the hall, moving through the dim, candle-lit corridor beyond the door that opened into a circular chamber three stories tall with bare, limestone walls and a dust-ridden stone floor. Daylight filtered in through the narrow rectangular windows spaced along the lip of the domed ceiling, preventing the space from being just as dark and shadowed as the corridor before it.

At the center of the round room stood a wooden table and six chairs occupied by five ordinary, downright unimpressive looking people.

One of the boring ordinaries seated at the head of the table—a rotund man with slick, salt-and-pepper hair and a pair of pale blue eyes sunk into a round, sagging, hound-dog face—looked up at Gabriel over the glasses slipping down his nose. "He's here," he announced to the others, prompting their attention to shift over to Gabriel as well.

A slender, pretty woman with rust colored hair stood from the table, smoothing her pale hands down the front of her vibrant green dress and smiling at him in welcome. "Please," she said, gesturing to the only empty chair at the table, "join us."

The chair he slipped into was placed at the end of the table. On his left there was a lanky man with glasses who looked to be fighting off a cold from the amount of snot he was blowing into the handkerchief pressed to this face and on the right sat a plump, grandmotherly old woman who grinned at him like he was the most precious eight-year-old she'd ever seen.

"What should we call you?" said the stern-looking black man who sat beside grandma. His withered face spoke to his advanced age, as did the white cloud of his hair and beard.

Gabriel shrugged, "You can call me Gabe."

"Gabe," said the friendly redhead sitting beside the nerdy snot-monster. She nodded once and motioned in turn to each person at the table. "This is Richard," fat guy, "Frederick," black guy, "Martha," grandma, "Heinrich," snot-bag, "and I'm Dora."

"Yeah, nice to meet you folks," he said. "Now maybe one of you can tell me why my friend's soul is missing?"

* * *

><p>"What do you mean, <em>missing<em>?"

Trevor sighed and shrugged a little, "Well, not _missing _per se but definitely _not there_."

Jo blinked, folding her arms and mentally reminding herself that, actually, she was very fond of Trevor. "Okay, what the hell does that mean?"

"It means," Nate announced, ending the call he'd been taking in the background and moving to rejoin the group, "that the records are sealed. Luckily I have an in with this girl in the court reporters office and she's emailing us the records now."

"_An in_?" Trevor echoed, scowling darkly at his boyfriend. "As in, you were _in_ her?"

Nate rolled his eyes. "We went out once…maybe twice. It was a long time ago, Trev." He threw the skinny hacker a smirk, "It was back before I wised up and realized I like boys better."

Apparently placated by this Trevor gave a little harrumph of satisfaction and, turning back to his laptop, logged himself into Nate's email account.

Watching him work from over his shoulder Nate once again took up his disgruntled cop routine. "I just changed my password!" he protested. "And it was really hard too, lots of number and random letters. I spent two days making myself memorize it!"

Trevor grinned and patted Nate's cheek affectionately. "Aw, you thought I wouldn't crack it? Aren't you just adorable?" He went back to typing, calling up the email from Katie the Court Reporter. "Hmm."

"Hmm, what?" Jo asked.

"Hmm…_hmm_," he replied. "From what I'm reading you and Jules were right, Jo. The Thompson kids are…wait for it…not related. Katie was adopted when she was six months old. It was a closed adoption, all very quiet and probably expensive."

"So, the related-theory still fits," Julie said, pleased that her idea hadn't been blown out of the water by Katie Thompson's survival.

Jo chewed her lower lip, looking back to Trevor, "And the boat?"

"No boat. At least not any boat I could find. If they do have one it's a secret boat and that doesn't sound crazy at all."

Jo's pocket began to vibrate and she fished her cell out of her jeans, glancing at the screen. Her mom. She excused herself from the living room and went out into the hallway to take the call.

"Hey," she said a little breathlessly in lieu of a hello, clutching the phone tightly to her ear. She hadn't realized until that very moment how much she missed her mom, how desperate she was just to hear her voice.

Jesus, what the hell was wrong with her? Her mom had just been there to visit and now she felt like she hadn't seen her in forever. She was acting like a sobbing toddler Mommy left at daycare for the very first time.

"Hey there, kiddo," her mom replied, sounding a little tired. "How're you doing?"

Jo's throat constricted as she tried not to cry. "I- I'm good."

"Sure?" her mom said, sound more alert now, worried. "Honey, you don't sound so good."

"No I…No…It's just…um…Kyle and I had a fight, s'all."

Her mother sighed into the phone, saying gravely, "I need to kill that boy?"

Jo scoffed, "No, no. It's a…It's kinda my fault."

"Listen, I know I'm just your mom and it's none of my business," Ellen said like she believed the complete opposite, "but honey if he ever hurts you he won't make it to sunset."

"Yeah mom, I know. Thanks." She took a breath to steady herself, made sure she wasn't going to almost break down in tears again. "So, you called?"

"Yeah, I just wanted to let you know I made it home in one piece."

"Good. How's Bobby?"

"Oh, you know same as ever, the obstante old coot." Ellen sighed and Jo imagined her mother running a hand through her hair in exasperation. "I tell ya, some days it seems like he's getting better and some days…I don't know. I just don't know. He won't even admit what he's upset about."

"People grieve all sorts of different ways," Jo reasoned.

"Yeah," Ellen said and Jo could tell by the tone that her Mom was beginning to loose some patience with her husband's gruff façade. "I'm not sure if my leaving for a couple of days made things better or worse."

"Well, I'm sure he's glad your home."

Ellen laughed, "The hell he is. First thing I made him do was eat some real food. He's been marinating in whiskey since I left. Good things the boys showed up when they did or he might've drowned his damn-fool self in the stuff."

"Sam and Dean?"

"Yeah, they're working this job that's got them stuck. Something about freak accidents and gold thread."

"Wait," Jo said, the rock in her throat from trying not to cry suddenly plummeting to her stomach. "That's what we're working on out here. That means-"

"This thing is bigger than we thought," Ellen agreed. "Tell me what you guys've got because they boys don't have much."

"Same here. So far we've got about a dozen dead, maybe more outta state, and almost no leads. The only thing we _do_ have is this gold thread stuff we keep finding at the accident sites. Nate had one of his buddies in forensics run it."

"And?"

"The guy said it's like the stuff's made of nothing and, according to him, nothing is made of nothing." Jo sighed, "Julie has this theory that the victims are all related but…I don't know, she might be onto something. Now I have this thing with a boat?"

"A boat?"

"Yeah, I dunno. Just a half-formed hunch I can't shake, I guess."

"Any of your deaths happen on water?"

"Nope. All dry land, every one," Jo sighed. "I dunno, maybe I'm going crazy. Just…could you look into it on your end? Maybe there's something in Bobby's stuff?"

"The boat thing? Sure, but don't expect too much baby girl," Ellen warned. "Your step-dad's resources are good but they're not magic."

"Yeah, I know," Jo smiled against the phone. "Thanks for looking into it anyways."

"What are mother's for?" Ellen replied. "Okay, well, I'll let the boys know we've got some more hands in on this thing. Keep us in the loop and we'll do the same, see if between all of us we can't get some answers."

"Sounds good."

"Talk to you later, okay baby?"

"Yeah," Jo said, quickly adding when she felt the conversation beginning to wrap up, "Hey, Mom? I love you. You know that…right?"

There was a long pause of silence on the other end of the line and Jo could practically feel her mother's concern pouring through the receiver. "Jo," Ellen said slowly, "of course I do. What in the hell is going on out there?"

"Mom, nothing, it's stupid. I just- I needed to know that you knew that. That's all."

"Joanna Beth, if something's wrong-"

"Nothing's wrong," Jo defended. "We'll talk later…okay?"

"Jo-"

"Bye, Mom."

Jo hung up before Ellen could get off another round of questioning. She wouldn't have even known what to say.

* * *

><p>The blank looks he was getting were not very encouraging. Likewise the fleeting looks of quiet confusion exchanged between the council members didn't inspire too much hope either.<p>

Dora, apparently the designated mouthpiece for The Council, frowned with obvious concern. "We have no information on this."

Gabriel's jaw set tightly in irritation. "Well, all I know is she was fine until we got here."

"I can assure you, we've done nothing to harm your friend."

"Look," he snapped, "last time I saw her she had a soul and now she doesn't, and in the between time _you people _had her. So, not to beat around the bush or anything, but _what the hell happened_."

It goes on like this for a while, back and forth, accusations, denials, and no resolution. He doesn't really know how but somewhere around the fifteenth go-around they somehow manage to convince him that they are just as dumb as they look.

"Gabe, I assure you we will help you find a way to awaken your friend," Dora says when they're all done squabbling, "and in the meantime Jo will receive the best care we have to offer."

"Speaking of which," Richard cut-in, "Now that things are out in the open and Florence is convinced you're physically fit, we can move you out of the infirmary and help get you settled in town."

Gabriel let loose smirk #7, the one that said, 'like hell'. "Thanks, but I'm perfectly happy staying with Flo and the gauze gals. We've got a good thing going, let's not break up the band."

Dora winced, "Unfortunately the Infirmary is only for those who are ill."

"Hey," he said sharply, making sure to glare each of them down in turn, "I'm not leaving her there alone."

A tense silence followed, awkwardness heavy in the air around them all, until Martha finally clucked and said, "Enough of this, of course he should be allowed to remain with his friend."

"Martha-" Frederick began to protest, only to be diverted by the old lady.

"Give the man some credit, Fred," she chastised, double-chin bobbing as she spoke. "He doesn't intend to stay there forever, just until his friend is healed. Once that happens they're both more than welcome in my boarding house until they can find more suitable lodgings." She smiled warmly at Gabriel, "Does that sound agreeable?"

"Thank you," he replied, a touch of uncertainty in his answer, not too sure why she had come to his aide.

"Well," said Richard, once again steering the conversation, "Now that that's settled I suppose our next order of business is to find you a position."

"Yes," Dora agreed eagerly, smiling brightly at Gabriel, "Tell us, what can you do?"

* * *

><p>"Fuck monkeys!"<p>

At Trevor's exclamation Jo's head snapped up from the dusty old compendium she'd been thumbing through. "What's wrong?"

"Oh…just…_everything_," Trevor replied, reaching up and grabbing two fistfuls of his own hair, pulling in frustration. "For starters, remember that nice little theory we were building on the victims all being related? Yeah, well, all that's now great big pile of dog poop."

"Okay," Jo said slowly, glancing over at Nate as if to say, 'handle your crazy boyfriend'.

"Trev," Nate said gently, "what happened?"

The skinny hacker blew out a heavy sigh. "I was keeping track of past victims' family members and so far they've all been dropping like flies. Bad for them, good for us. But just for shits and giggles I was also tracking Katie Thompson, even though we now know she's was bought at the baby store."

"Okay, so?"

Trevor clicked something on his laptop and handed it over to Nate who took the laptop and, reading over the contents on the screen, began to frown.

"Katie Thompson was found dead this morning in her bathroom," Trevor explained to the others, "Cause of death is undetermined but the preliminary report says she was struck by lightning."

"Indoors?" Kyle said in disbelief.

"Apparently it can happen," Trevor said sardonically. "It's rare but… you know."

He paused a moment before dropping the next thing on them. "And that's not all."

"What now?" Jo said warily.

"I expanded the parameters of my search and…there are a lot more cases of this than we thought."

"How many more?"

"_A lot_," he repeated, "Maybe twenty, thirty incidents fitting our profile? And that's just the Pacific coast."

Jo sighed. "Great."

* * *

><p>"I don't see what's so great about it."<p>

Edgar shrugged, "Every failing presents a new opportunity."

Gabriel rolled his eyes, "Save it for the fortune cookies."

In order to orient new residents and mold them into productive members of society the Settlement employed something they called "Trial Days," wherein the more-or-less unskilled newbie would be shopped around to local proprietors to try their hand at said proprietor's business.

Trial days, Gabriel decided, were _almost_ as bad as actual death.

Finding him a position in the town's workforce was a thing easier said than done. In the course what could've been two weeks—time was difficult to gage at the Settlement as it seemed to speed up or slow down at random intervals—Gabriel bounced from one job to the next like an unruly child stuck in the foster system, running through the town baker, miller, tailor and grocer like they were disposable paper cups. And at the end of every trial day he'd walk back to the infirmary beside poor Edgar and lament the experience, after which his Council-appointed one-man temp agency would suggest another placement.

His prospective employers were all generally pretty nice about it, smiling at him encouragingly in the mornings if not a little sadly in the evenings when they would sigh and shrug and profess lamely that perhaps his working there was not going to work out. After the third time their smiles also took on an uneasy degree of concern that had him a little perplexed, but when he asked Edgar about it he was only told that everyone was just eager for him to find his place.

"You could always assist me at the shop," Edgar suggested after Nelson the tailor had shook his head sadly and admitted that haberdashery was perhaps not Gabriel's forte.

"You know," Edgar continued, "just until you find a better fit."

Gabriel scoffed a little to himself. Not surprisingly there wasn't much call for a power-depleted Trickster/Archangel here in Pleasantville. Edgar's offer was more than kind though, especially considering how everyone else was increasingly treating him like he might be radioactive.

"Thank's Ed," he replied. " 'preciate the offer."

"I can't pay you very much," Edgar cautioned. "But at least it'll keep your days occupied."

Gabriel shrugged and supplied his own warning. "I've been told I can be kinda grating sometimes."

That made him think about Jo and he smiled, trying to imagine what her response would be to such an admission.

"I'm sure we'll manage," Edgar replied, halting at the stairs of the infirmary. He lived just three doors down and this had become routine for the two men. "Give my best to Jo," he requested without irony as Gabriel jogged up the narrow steps.

Gabriel waved a hand back in acknowledgement. Edgar was the only one in town—with the possible exception of Florence and maybe a few of the nurses—who knew Gabriel made a point of vising Jo at least once a day.

He knew it was stupid, knew better than anyone that it wasn't going to help any. She wasn't in a coma and she wasn't a houseplant, she was missing her soul in a place where that's basically all you were. Talking to her wasn't going to fix it.

Still, he climbed up the three extra flights from his floor to Jo's, same as he'd done every day since he'd gone to see the Council, and claimed the chair he'd dragged over to the side of the bed a few visits ago.

Like the first time he'd seen her in this place she still looked like she could've just been sleeping, but her face was noticeably pale now that he'd gotten used to seeing colors again. Her chest rose and fell with each breath and for a while he could sit there and pretend that she was just sleeping, but she never moved, never made a sound, and after a while it got harder to pretend.

His Grace, still inaccessible behind that inexplicable wall built somewhere inside him, flickered like a flame at her proximity, trying to reach out and search for that bit of itself he'd sliced off and buried inside her. It recognized that the owner of its missing piece was empty and rebelled. It was wrong, so wrong, and there was nothing he could do.

Gabriel could count on one hand the number of times in his entire existence when he'd felt truly helpless. Lately he's been turning those times over in his mind, replaying them. Lucifer's heavy hand on his shoulder just before he turned away from them all and fell, his Father's echoing silence in the aftermath, the war in Heaven, the blood of his brothers on his blade, his decision to run, the impending end of all things. This wasn't as bad as all that, but in some ways it was almost worse.

He might not have intended it—actually, he _definitely_ hadn't intended it—but somewhere along the way, probably even before the bonding if he was being honest, he'd come to think of Jo as his responsibility. Stuck in the situation they'd been dropped into, her being about as worldly as a brand new beach ball and him having been witness to the creation of the universe, it kind of put things in perspective. In the grand scheme of things she'd been like a lost puppy stamping through puddles in the rain and, while he'd done some truly despicable things in his infinite time, washing his hands of her and her problems had never really been on the menu, and even if it had been now it was definitely too late.

If he'd been paying attention to his feelings out in the forest, that nagging insistence that Persephone back the hell off _his_ human, he would've spotted the road signs. As it was he'd somehow missed the warnings and now he was stuck.

He reached out and took her hand, not to be sappy or sentimental he insisted to himself but to get a read on her emotions today. He'd found out early on that he could get a faint twinge of emotion from her through touch. Some days she felt happy, some days sad, but most days she was just frustrated.

Today was a frustration day, but it was still sort of comforting. These glimpses of Jo served to remind him that she was still there, however removed she might've seemed. It calmed his Grace to know that even if she seemed totally empty, there was still some residue in the cup.

"So, as it turns out I'm not so good at the tailoring thing," he said conversationally. "Actually, I'm kind of banned from the store forever now so…getting close here might pose a problem in the near future. Nelson's a good guy, but that dude has got to learn to take a joke."

He liked to tell himself that he was just talking because he couldn't stand the silence and that he wasn't talking _to_ her or anything like that. Sometimes he didn't talk at all and just sat there with her for a while until the chair started to hurt his ass or his stomach grumbled in hunger, both new and decidedly unpleasant sensations for him.

Gabriel sighed, looked down at her serene, impassive face, and let himself just this once accept that he really wasn't talking just to talk.

"Wherever you are," he told her thickly, "I hope it's nice."

* * *

><p>"No, it's awful!"<p>

Trevor rolled his eyes at Julie. He'd stumbled across the crime scene photos of Katie Thompson's corpse fried like a chicken wing on the floor of her bathroom, and had pronounced the sight 'totally cool,' at which point Julie had sternly lodged protest.

"Don't be such a Pollyanna," he groused at her. "Death and mayhem are like our bread and butter."

"That doesn't mean we get to disrespect the dead, Trevor," she countered.

"Mooooom," Trevor whined at Jo who was across the room pretending she couldn't hear them, "Julie won't let me be a despicable human being!"

"Kids, play nice," Kyle warned with mock severity from the corner table where he sat cleaning his guns, "Or else."

Jo's cell phone rang and she slipped out of the chair she'd commandeered, glancing at the caller ID. "It's my mom," she told the other, motioning towards the hallway with the phone like an excuse to escape. "Maybe she's got something."

She planted herself down the hall from the living room, her back against the wall as she answered the phone.

"Hey mom," she said.

"Hey baby girl. Got anything new?"

Jo sighed, ran a hand through her hair in a way she knew she'd picked up from the woman on the other end of the line. "Honestly? It's not looking good," she confessed. "Turns out we've got a lot more deaths than we originally thought, at least thirty. And Julie's whole idea about the victims being related hit a snag. We keep seeing people from the same families bite it but then we'll get a wild card like some adopted kid who kicks off two days after everyone else in her family."

"Well ain't that just frustrating as all get out," Ellen commiserated, continuing wearily, "This thing's got us all scratching our collective heads."

"I guess so," Jo breathed. "Something feels weird about this one, y'know?"

"Darlin', it's called hunting…they're all weird."

Jo hummed her agreement, feeling a little stupid for bringing it up. "I'm probably just tired. I haven't been sleeping too well lately."

Her mom, the parental lecturer that she was, rushed to chastise. "Joanna Be-"

"Yeah mom, I know," Jo cut her off before she could get worked up. "Tired hunters get stupid; stupid hunters get dead," she quoted. "I've heard it once or twice before. Listen, I gotta get going, okay?"

"You've heard it because it's true." said Ellen. "Oh, and before I forget, I might've found something on that boat thing you mentioned earlier.

"Yeah?"

"I did a little digging around in the family histories of some of our victims and turns out a lot of 'em were immigrants who came over on the same boat."

"Really?"

"Yeah, some ship called the Titanic," said Ellen. "Ever heard of it?"

"Nope," Jo said. "Doesn't ring any bells."

"Well, it may be something, it may be nothing. At any rate, you might wanna look into it. I'll mention it to the boys too."

"Yeah, okay," Jo replied. "Thanks for getting it this far."

"Anytime," Ellen said. "Just remember, if you find out anything you let us know. Don't go keeping to yourself so you can run off and get yourselves killed. Be smart and call for backup when you need it."

"Yeah mom, I know."

"And for God's sake get some sleep!"

"Okay, I got it. I gotta go, Mom. Talk to you later," Jo said firmly, resisting the urge to just go ahead and hang up by reminding herself that it would only get her mom more worked up.

"Yeah, well, you just be careful," Ellen cautioned sternly in place of a goodbye.

Jo ended the call and shoved the phone back into the pocket of her jeans, indulging in a little immaturity by muttering to herself, "I always am," while turning to head back to the living room, only to come face-to-face with a bespectacled blond standing right in her path.

The adrenaline rapidly dumping itself into her bloodstream made it so she had to wrestle her fight or flight response for control of her own body again.

"Hello Jo," the blonde said primly, blue eyes like shards of glass staring her down behind black-rimmed glasses.

In a fluid movement born of practice Jo's hand went to the waistband of her jeans, only to remember belatedly that her gun had—for some reason—occupied a spot on the kitchen counter for the last few days. She cursed and settled for folding her arms and glaring at the thing in the librarian getup. "You're not supposed to be able to be here."

"You either," the blonde retorted with a mysterious smirk.

"We warded this place against demons," Jo continued, as if the woman had said nothing.

"I'm no demon," the uninvited guest replied sharply, as if Jo had just called her the worst slur imaginable. "And considering what I did for you, you should really try and show me a little more respect."

Jo reared back as if the woman had just suggested she go shove her fingers into a light socket. "_Excuse_ me?"

"Plucking you and mommy out of the wasteland?" the woman continued, advancing on Jo, forcing the hunter to edge backwards down the hall, away from the living room where she could get help. "I _saved_ you so you could be my game piece against those insufferable Winchester brats and that winged idiot who's fucking up my life, and this is the thanks I get? I gave you a chance to set things right and, I have to say, you've really been a disappointment."

Jo needed to stall just until she could get away, maybe down the kitchen where she grab her gun and blow this bitch away, whatever it was. "What the hell are you even talking ab-"

"It's been fun," the blonde interrupted, "but playtime's over."

The woman…thing…raised her hand as if to touch Jo's face and then...

* * *

><p>Atropos stopped. Well, to be more specific everything had stopped. The young hunter who'd been edging away from her inevitable fate stood frozen in place, her wide eyes unmoving.<p>

The air had shifted; the world had become a little quieter. Time itself had stopped.

"My dear Fate," a voice at the other end of the hallways said and Atropos turned to face the last person she wanted to see here, "I believe we need to renegotiate my contract."

"We had a deal," Atropos reminded him sternly. "You've already broken it once. I really suggest you stop getting in my way."

"Hey," he replied, holding up his hands in imitation of surrender, "You are the one who involved me in this, remember?"

"I _involved_ so you could mess with her head and get her to do what I want, not chat over coffee!"

"She doesn't even remember that," he insisted. "Besides, I got her to lean on those Winchester people, didn't I? Planted the idea of the boat and there she went running off to tell mother all about it."

"For all the good that did!" Atropos shrieked, before seeming to remember herself, her hands coming down to smooth over her skirt as she collected herself and continued more calmly. "Involving you in this was a mistake. I see that now. I never should have come to you with this. I should have known that you wouldn't treat this seriously."

"You really should've," he smirked. "Now, about that contract-"

"There's nothing to discuss," she said sharply. "Our deal was that you would influence the girl in exchange for one week in the future. You've had your week and the time for influence is done. The girl has served her purpose and you need to return to your own timeline."

"She's served her purpose," he echoed. "What the does that mean?"

"It means that after I return you to that rock where I found you, I'll come back and clean up the mess you've made here."

"You mean you're going to kill her."

"Oh, Loki," she chided, sounding almost as if she pitied him, "She's not even alive. Not really. She's an echo I trapped in a bottle to make the Winchesters see reason," she continued sourly. "Besides, what is it of your concern? She's no disciple of yours. She's just a plain, ordinary human, just like all your other playthings. In fact, I'll even leave you with something of a bonus when I put you back where belong. How does a nice, virginal shepherdess sound? Now be a good boy and come quietly."

The pagan god's characteristic happy sarcasm instantly hardened to the cold steel of a knife's edge. "Careful Fate," he cautioned, advancing on her in the same way she'd done to Jo. "You may control destiny, but you don't control me. I could shred through you like tissue paper if the mood struck."

"You don't scare me, Trickster," she spat, fierce despite the fear he could see edging in behind her eyes.

"Oh, I think I do," he replied, backing her right into a wall. "Now, you're going to let this one go."

To her credit she attempted to maintain her veneer of calm contempt in the face of the building anxiety swirling around her mind. "You. Can't. Make. Me."

His answering smirk was full of dark promise, "Wanna bet?"

The veneer faltered and for the first time since his arrival she looked uncertain. Generally even beings like Atropos tended to tread softly around Tricksters; some even jumped realities to avoid getting tangled in their webs. Atropos knew by the look on this Trickster's face that she'd pushed this interaction too far.

"Here's what's going to happen," he announced, taking a step back, suddenly light and casual and almost friendly, "I'm going to be magnanimous and _not_ snap you into a million specks of dust and you're going to go and feed your beef to someone else…say, those Winchester guys you're always going on about, I don't care. But you're going to leave _this one_," he said, pointing over at Jo's still frozen form for emphasis, "alone."

The Fate's gaze shifted between the Trickster and the girl, torn. Accepting that she'd lost this time, Atropos huffed, rolled her eyes, and promptly disappeared.

He grinned to himself over his victory, but his celebratory expression didn't last long. He turned back to the girl stood motionless in the hallway, still caught in the moment he'd grasped like a moving rope, halting its progress. He stood staring at her face for a moment, wondering at it, trying to find the thing that compelled him so viscerally to her.

When Atropos had come to him he'd just managed to free himself from the rock Odin had chained him to as punishment for pissing off the entire Nordic pantheon and trying to get that jack-hole Baldr killed. The Fate had flattered his vanity and complimented his skill, baiting him for the job with the promise of learning something about the future as this little task, she'd said, was to occur a few millennia down the road.

It had been that promise that had sealed the deal, for as much as he was capable of traveling through time it was dangerous business to cross your own path. Bad shit tended to happen to those that went digging around in their own future. But this, he'd reasoned, was different. This was a temporary trip, just a glance really, at what was to come and he wasn't even the one providing the show. So as long as he stayed mostly out of the way and didn't (literally) ruffle any feathers, no one needed to be the wiser. He had not expected this, a showdown with one of the Fates over the life of one measly human.

_No_ he argued against his own thoughts, _no human life is worthless_. He rolled his eyes and then felt guilty about the flippancy. He really needed to get this thing he was going through worked out, because spending all of eternity as two disparate beings with incongruent principles was not going to be a whole lotta fun.


	7. Chapter 6: The Story of Us

**Author's Note:**

So, true to my word I didn't make you all wait six months for another update. Yay! More good news is that this chapter was actually much, much longer but I chopped in half to make two chapters, which means another update isn't too far away!

I also want to thank everyone who took the time to post a review for this story. I really appreciate the feedback and letting me know that people are actually reading and enjoying this thing has kept me writing, so thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you! Once again I'm exposition!girl here but we should be moving forward again shortly.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Six<strong>

**The Story of Us**

* * *

><p>"Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be." – Orson Scott Card, <em>Ender's Game<em>

"Through others we become ourselves." – Lev S. Vygotsky

* * *

><p>Exhaustion was a novel experience for Gabriel, like begrudgingly picking up a foreign language through daily exposure, the heavy weary feeling dragging at him at the end of each day, making his shoulders slump and his eyes water. The only plus he could see from the whole thing was yawning which was, in his opinion, like a tidy little orgasm, the feeling crawling up the back of his neck before cresting over him like a wave, breath escaping in a rush as all of his muscle contracted and then released, settling him in a sleepy, satisfied afterglow.<p>

He was mid-yawn when he felt it, a jolt of emotion shot through his and Jo's hands were they were entwined on the bed, the force of it making his toes curl against the soles of his shoes like he was being electrocuted.

"What the-"

He gasped as he was slapped face-first into a torrent of feeling that was so familiar he had to check to make sure he hadn't somehow projected the emotions onto Jo only to have them reflected back at him. But no, the feelings weren't exactly his. Well, they were but they weren't.

"Oh," he said aloud, a memory presenting itself in his mind. It was a little like shuffling through a deck of playing cards and stumbling across a card from a different deck.

The new memory was a little hazy with age, but he could still get the gist of it. He stood with a motionless Jo in the hallway of some unfamiliar house and he was reaching out to touch her hand. It was a moment of time, a connection bridging the gap, and suddenly he knew exactly where it was Jo had been all this time, and he knew that he'd been there too, but that was a long, long time ago.

In the memory Gabriel could feel the prod of interest tinged with a nascent possessiveness towards Jo which he could sympathize with, but which needed to be stymied.

_Not yet_, he sent out through the connection, cautioning patience whilst knowing he was asking a great thing of his counterpart by doing so. _Send her back_, he insisted. _She belongs here_.

For a moment he was sure that he was going to receive a refusal and lose Jo all because of his own petty selfishness, but then bullish reluctance gave way to acceptance and then something else. An intense cord of Loki's curiosity, stronger as it had been back then, pulsed at him like the shine of a familiar lighthouse. It thrilled along his own amazement for a moment, the two emotions twinning with recognition, before snapping away and fading like an echo.

Loki let go.

* * *

><p>He watched as the liquid beaded above him, the shining green drop glistening in the dying daylight, straining against the great serpent's white tooth. The snake was long dead, its body a lifeless husk pinned to the rocky shelf above him, but its venom was still potent, still raining fat droplets of burning acid down over his head with vicious regularity. His throat was raw from calling for his wife who had wondered off ages ago to empty the bowl she'd been using to catch the venom. He knew, deep down, she wouldn't be returning.<p>

"SIGYN!" He cried, his voice now a hoarse imitation of what it once had been when he'd used it to mock and jeer and goad the other gods into imprisoning him here like this. He didn't even bother to struggle against his bindings now as the sticky entrails of his slaughtered son had hardened into iron bands that cut into his flesh with every gasping breath.

The sun had almost crept its way out of the sky when the light appeared, more bright and beautiful than anything he had ever seen. It brought tears to his eyes and the pace of his heart quickened as the light grew brighter and brighter until he felt as if he almost could not endure another moment of the exquisite joy its presence inspired.

And then the light spoke to him in a voice so dulcet and commanding that he strained against his bonds so that he might be closer to it.

_Loki_, the light said. _I am Gabriel_.

The Trickster strained to see through the light, to catch sight of this Gabriel who spoke so sweetly, but through the light there was just more light and on and on like the unending fire of the sun. In all his many years he had never encountered such a being.

He struggled to speak and when he did his own voice sounded so rough and offensive when compared to that of the light. "What are you?"

_I am an Angel_, said the light. _And I am here to free you if that is your wish._

Loki's mind stumbled over the unfamiliar word. "What is an Angel?"

_An Angel is a servant of God._

"Which god?"

Loki had known all sorts of gods; old gods and new gods, kind gods and wrathful gods, petty gods and generous gods, weak gods and strong gods. He wondered what sort of god would be served by such a being as this Angel. Surly no god of his pantheon for he knew them all and their inclinations and not a one of their petty, fault-ridden ilk could command something this powerful and pure.

_The God_, the light insisted. _The only God there is, was, and ever shall be. The Creator. The Author of all that you know and all you shall ever know._

"I do not understand," the Trickster confessed.

_You will_.

"So you have come to free me?"

_In a manner of speaking_.

Loki, a clever being capable of weaving traps with words, recognized the parsing of that phrase. "You would kill me?"

_No_, affirmed the Angel. _That is not my intention. In fact, your wellbeing is very much my concern. No, Loki, my dear Trickster, I intend to see that you live for a very long time, indeed._

"But why would you help me?"

There was a silent moment and Loki had a feeling that the Angel was choosing its words carefully. When it finally spoke, words that should have been threatening were matter-of-fact, almost regretful. _Everything comes at a price_.

"And what is your price, Angel?"

The answer came in a simple syllable that road the winds.

_You_.

* * *

><p>The world smelled like clean sheets and ozone. This was the first thing she registered as she drifted through the hazy veil of unconsciousness, feeling detached and separate from he own body and then, like a cord snapping taught, she was solid and whole again, her skin tingling at the acute sensation of sheets enfolding her.<p>

Jo opened her eyes only to snap them shut again against a blinding white light. Groaning, she tried to move her hands up to her face to shield it from the brightness, but founds she could only move her right hand, the left remaining incapacitated and uncooperative on the bed. Suddenly the blinding whiteness faded to a more tolerable level and something warm and heavy moved across the palm of her lame left hand.

Eyes watering, she blinked a few times until she could finally adjust to the remaining light, rolling her head against the pillow to look over to the left, trying to see the heavy warm thing that was keeping her hand pinned to the bed. As it happened the thing in possession of her hand turned out to be another hand and her eyes followed a path from the appendage up to a hair-dusted forearm that was attached to a broad shoulder, which in turn led up to a face.

Gabriel's face.

Body bent over the edge of the bed, his head rested on the blanket beside her leg, face turned up towards hers as if he'd been watching her sleep before drifting off himself. His eyes were closed and his expression was more calm and serious than she'd ever seen it, save perhaps for when they'd been on the beach and he'd carefully carved a line into her hand with her own blade. He looked so much younger in sleep, and yet older at the same time.

No, he didn't look younger exactly. He looked open and sinless. She found it made her feel both closer to him and further away.

It fascinated her, watching him being this still and quiet, but it also scared her for reasons she couldn't quite figure. Maybe it was the insinuation of timelessness that clung to him when he was like this, as if he could outlast empires and oceans in his sleep? What made it that much more unsettling was the fact that he probably could.

Maybe it was the way her free hand twitched as if it wanted to reach out and touch him, to run her fingers through his hair and brush away a few of the gold-brown strands that had fallen across his forehead. His skin looked as smooth as polished marble and she kept thinking about what it would feel like to skim her hand over the angular curve of his jaw where days-old stubble was beginning show.

It was no easy task abandoning her study of him for the sake of glancing around the unfamiliar room they were inhabiting, taking in the Spartan décor of antique furnishings and wispy white drapery that swayed in response to the breeze whispering through the open window by the door. The fresh air circulated with the heavy, stale antiseptic smell she always associated with hospitals and morgues. It was the smell more than anything that set her on edge.

In that moment she wanted nothing more than for Gabriel to wake up, to be with her, to talk and joke and take nothing serious.

Gently, she squeezed his hand in hers and he stirred a little, letting out a vaguely annoyed sound, like the kind a kid would make when being prodded awake by his mother on a school day. She squeezed again, harder this time.

"Ngggggh," he moaned and tried to burrow his head beneath her thigh.

"Gabr'el," Jo whispered hoarsely, her throat like sandpaper.

"Mmm," he answered sluggishly, still half-asleep, "Mmyeah?"

There was pause, a long moment where nothing happened and she could actually _feel_ him turning things over in his head. She could also feel it when he put things together and not just because his head snapped up, the sudden movement sending ripples of vibration through the bed springs.

Gabriel's eyes meet hers and stared in wonder. Jo stared back, transfixed by the color. It felt as if this were first time she had ever seen his eyes, really seen them. Without the dull gray she'd almost gotten used to, his eyes were the color of honey with flecks of gold radiating out from the iris. Beautiful and ethereal and everything an angel's eyes should be.

She made herself stop obsessing about her friend's eye color and decided that it was about time she get some answers about what was going on. She ordered all the things she wanted to know in her mind, numbering them 1 through 20 and then began with the first order of business.

"Wha happened?" she asked roughly, her voice breaking.

"You were gone for a while," he explained, carefully extracting his hand from hers and she felt a rush of longing for the contact but she didn't know if it belonged to her or to him. "Welcome back, by the way."

"Was I…" Jo's brow furrowed and she cleared her throat again. "The Titanic, it sank…right?"

"Like a rock."

"Yeah, I thought so. I had the weirdest dream," said Jo. "I think you were in it."

"_Oh_?" he exclaimed with surprised delight, his eyebrows arching up to his hairline, musing, "And what exactly were we doing in this dream of yours? Hopefully it was something dirty and untoward. I'm always at my best with dirty and untoward."

"Don't be disgusting."

"Whatever you say, Princess," he grinned broadly.

Gabriel could tell through the bond that she wasn't as disgusted as she liked to pretend. He was relieved that her time away hadn't seemed to damage the connection; her shining soul swirled before his eyes, the spark of his Grace visibly pulsing in time with the rest that was inside him. She was still easy to read.

"Tell me about your dream," he asked, because he could feel her thinking about it.

"It was crazy and so…_real_," Jo professed. "I was still alive and living out in California with these people, my friends I guess, and you were there I think but…but I didn't know who you were. It was like I just...forgot you."

"Not likely," he scoffed, preening for effect. "I'm pretty unforgettable."

"Seriously," she said, quiet and intense. "Were you there?"

"I've been here the whole time," he hedged unconvincingly.

Jo's stomach did a somersault. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing."

She winced, her stomach clinching. "Okay, stop lying before I throw up."

"I'm not-" Jo's glare was fierce. "Okay, alright. I was there…sort of."

"Sort of?" she echoed, incredulous. "So all of that, it was real?"

"I guess," he shrugged. "I don't really remember a whole lot. It was a long, _long_ time ago and I wasn't…all there back then."

"What do you mean, you don't remember? Aren't you the guy who insisted on telling me, in minute gory detail, all about the quote-unquote 'forgotten fifth sacking of Rome'? For God's sake, you're an Archange-"

"Whoa, whoa, hey," he cut in quickly, eyes darting around the room like he expected someone to pop out from behind the drapes and shout 'Surprise!'. "Let's just be careful using words like that around here."

"What? Why?" She cast a wary look towards all the unfamiliar, functional antique furnishings around the room. "Where are we, anyway?"

"The Settlement," he replied blandly. "And let me tell you, it ain't all it's cracked up to be."

"Bad?"

"_Boring_," he corrected. "It's like living in ye olde timey village of the damned. Everyone here's just so…_happy_. It's creepy."

"Doesn't sound so bad," said Jo.

After what they'd gone through just to get here 'boring' and 'content' actually sounded kind of nice. But poor Gabriel, she thought. Knowing him he was probably climbing the walls in this place. By now she'd spent enough time with him to know that much. She thought back to the out-and-out glee he'd shown in the alternate timeline when he'd admitted the temptation to cause mischief by showing himself to her was just too much to contain.

Speaking of which, "Stop trying to distract me," she admonished. "What'd you mean you don't remember?"

He rolled his eyes. He should've known she wouldn't be put off for long. Damn hunters! They were actually a lot like vicious little hellhounds when they wanted something; they'd bite down and refuse to let go until they got it.

"I wasn't exactly at my best," he said. "I was kind of going through some stuff. Finding myself, I guess you could say."

She laughed, "What? Gabriel: the College years?"

Gabriel sighed, "Okay, let me start back at the beginning…"

* * *

><p><em>Have you decided<em>?

Loki sat down heavy on the despised rock, careful to avoid the serpent's dripping venom. He had since given up the luxury of pacing through the dirt after having spent so long chained down on the rock and was now chewing over the Angel's offer.

Gabriel had freed him so that he could make this decision without duress and he had used the time, nearly six months of solitude on this spit of land amid the great ocean, to think his options over. Nearly six month had passed since the Angel had left, stating that Loki should think over his decision without Gabriel unduly influencing him, but now the Angel was back and wanted his answer.

"I have questions," Loki practically warned.

_Of course_, replied the Angel, sounding amused. _You may ask me anything_.

"If I say no," the Trickster began, rushing to assure, "not that I am, but if I do, will you leave me how you found me?"

He almost couldn't bear the thought of returning to how things were before, bound to that rock, the venom dripping down on him in ceaseless burning torture.

_No_, answered Gabriel. _But I also cannot allow you to leave this place. You committed a crime and interfering with your imprisonment is not my place_.

"But is that not what you are offering?" he reasoned. "Would accepting not interfere with my imprisonment, as you say?"

_If you were to accept your crimes would be irrelevant._

Loki frowned darkly, "Because I would not be me anymore."

_Because you would be more than you,_ Gabriel corrected.

"Why?" Loki asked for what felt like the thousandth time. "Why are you offering me this?"

_Because I cannot go home and I cannot stay here without your help_.

"You can't go home?"

_I cannot watch my family destroy itself anymore. I cannot stand by and endure my brothers' fighting_.

"I can't go home because I _cause _fighting," Loki laughed.

_So here we are, two outcasts_, Gabriel remarked, his mirth clear.

In the ensuing silence Loki nodded in thought. "I suppose you want your answer then?"

The Angel's patient silence indicated that he was listening.

Loki ran his fingers down over the twisted iron bands the Angel had wrenched him free of six months ago, felt the cool metal beneath his fingertips and sighed. His wife was gone, his children were dead, and his fellow gods had banished him until Ragnarock; there was nothing left for him on this path.

Suddenly this complicated matter seemed very simple and such a thing required a simple answer.

Loki opened his mouth and, low and behold, a "yes" tumbled out.

* * *

><p>"Wait, so, you're <em>two<em> people," Jo summarized for herself. "Gabriel _and_ Loki."

"Like peanut butter and chocolate; great separate, better together."

"So what, it's like…" she struggled to think of a correlation to this very odd circumstance, "Like having multiple personalities or something?"

"Not really. It's more like, well, there's really _nothing_ like it, but I guess you could say it's like having a patchwork quilt for a brain. Some of the patches are Loki, some of 'em are Gabriel and the whole thing put together is me."

"Sound's confusing."

"Yeah, it was for a while," he admitted. "I kinda even had a mini mental breakdown for a while there, but that was back in the Dark Ages so I don't think anybody really noticed."

"And now?"

"One Angel, under God, indivisible," he recited. "Every once in a while there'll be something that pulls me in half though, makes Loki feel one way and Gabriel another, but that happens to everybody. They've even got a fancy five-dollar word for it 's called 'cognitive dissonance'."

Jo mouth the term silently to herself a few times.

"My dissonance just happens to be a little more literal than other peoples'," he added wryly.

"I know what you mean."

"Yeah?"

"You know that place where we were? That… whatever you wanna call it?"

"Alternate timeline," he supplied helpfully.

Jo nodded, momentarily distracted by a memory from her dream that, as it turned out, wasn't a dream at all. In it Gabriel was slowly saying the words to her one by one, like she was a child. _Alternate_. _Time_. _Line_.

She shook her head a little as if it were an etch-a-sketch she could clear with a few simple motions. "Yeah, that," she confirmed. "Well now it's like I've got these two separate sets of memories now, the real ones and the dream ones…only the dream ones feel just as real as the real ones."

"Sure, why not."

She gave him a stern look for his flippancy. "For instance," she continued, "my Step-Dad. I never had one…only I _did_. After my dad died my mom never remarried…except that I can remember her marrying Bobby when I was twelve. I remember being at the wedding, moving to South Dakota… I remember loving Bobby like a father but then I think about it and he's also just this grouchy old guy Sam and Dean run with sometimes."

"That's fucked up."

"Tell me about it. And then there's you."

"Me? What'd I do?"

"You came to visit me and then made me forget that you were ever there."

Gabriel tried to remember that far back, tried to cut through the thick hazy fog that shrouded his memories of the early days just after Gabriel and Loki had fused together. A single memory materialized out of the haze, the edges visible if not its finer details.

"Atropos didn't want me talking to you directly, I think," he recounted. "Lemme tell ya, she was _pissed_. That I _do _remember."

"Atropos?"

"Yeah, the Fate that kidnapped your soul for a while so you could lean on Sam and Dean and nudge 'em in the right direction," he said. "Now that I'm really thinking about it I can remember it all a little more."

Which was true. The memories were coming a little easier now, like a whatever had been blocking them had moved an inch or two, letting a few more slip through the cracks and into the forefront of his mind.

"She was ticked because someone de-sunk the Titanic and created a bunch of new souls that weren't supposed to be around. She was going around bumping them off but that wasn't fixing the bigger problem , so she got you to do her dirty work and get the message through to our two favorite emotionally co-dependent hunters, knew they'd do the right thing and sacrifice for the greater good and blah, blah, blabbity-blah."

"Why didn't she just tell them? Or, better yet, get you… or _past you_, to do it? Why involve me?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. Guess it needed to come from someone they'd trust. Atty must've known I wasn't the guy for that. Not only was I supposed to be dead—and not even a Fate can fix that—but after dicking them around like I did I'm not really their favorite person. I mean, sure, in the end I did 'em a solid and whatnot. I even left 'em a really nice parting gift, but something tells me that I'm the last guy they'd listen to if I went running to them with something like that."

"Why, what'd you do?"

"Well, the first time I met them I made Dean fight some seriously talented strippers I created while I had Sam and their drunken parental stand in-"

"Bobby?" she said sharply. "My _Stepdad_?"

"Right, yeah," he grimaced, "Sorry about that. Any who, I sorta sent a chainsaw-wielding giant after them."

"_What_?"

"What, what? They were there to _kill_ me! And I was only there doing my job, making the unrighteous pay for their unrighteousness," he reasoned. "They could've just left me alone. I wasn't hurting anyone...who didn't _deserve _it. But no, they went and stabbed me with a _tree_! I'm chalking that one up to self-defense!"

"And what about the other times?"

"What makes you think there were other times?"

"Because you _said_ there were other times."

"Did I?"

"Gabriel-"

"Fine! All right, so I might've trapped Sam in a groundhog-day loop where I kept making Dean die over and over and over and over again. But c'mon, that was just funny."

"Bet Sam didn't think so."

"Well, no, but I was teaching him a lesson about being too dependent on Dean."

"Yeah?" Jo scoffed. "How'd that that one go?"

"Kinda blew up in my face a little bit." He frowned, muttering, "Probably should've seen that one coming."

"And that's it? That's all you did?"

"Yep," he answered, before amending reluctantly, "Well, expect for that last time, but I don't think we should count that."

"Why?"

"I was under a lot of stress," he argued. "I thought I had to make them accept their cosmic roles as Michael and Lucifer's human Halloween costumes." He shook his head, dejectedly adding, "I just wanted it all over, so sue me."

She regarded him quietly for a moment, considering the deep ocean of hurt that always seemed to want to drag her under whenever he brought up one of his brothers.

"Must've been hard, being in the middle of that fight."

He let out a bitter, humorless laugh. "You have no idea."

Only she did in a way. She could feel his sorrow like the slow burn of a thousand lit matches lying beneath her skin.

"They weren't always like that, you know," he said, "Michael and Lucifer? They were just my big brothers. They taught me everything, made time for me when Dad was too busy constructing the universe. I mean, the four of us, we were the first _anything_, so, you know, we were close."

"I was an only child," Jo shrugged. "But back there, where Bobby was my Stepdad, I spent a lot of time with Sam and Dean when I was a kid, seeing how John dropped them on us every chance he could get. They're pretty much the closest thing I have to brothers. I can't imagine them being in a fight like that and me having to choose a side."

"Face it, you'd pick Dean," he said knowingly.

She blushed a little at the insinuation but just shook her head. "Maybe before, but now? I don't know. I mean, Dean was a lot older so Sam and I got stuck with each other a lot. We learned to ride our bikes together; he took me to my first movie… He even taught me how to whistle."

"You learned to ride bikes together? Isn't he, like, five years older than you?"

Gabriel had always been a little baffled by the way humans tracked and guarded their precious years like a bunch of chronologically-minded accountants, but he was pretty sure that both Winchester were at least half a decade older than Jo.

"He got a late start."

"Guess so."

"It's a little crazy," she said, "remembering my life one way and then all of the sudden there're all these new memories stuck in, y'know."

"Yeah, I kinda do," he grinned, tapping a finger to his head. "Thinking for two, remember?"

Jo grinned and patted his arm. "Guess we've got that in common."

"Guess so," he smiled back.

"So, how'd you get mixed up with this Atropos chick anyway?"

"How do I get mixed up in anything?" he remarked wryly. "Just trying to have a little fun."

* * *

><p>He flexed his fingers, then his toes, tried to get used to the sensation of having both of those appendages, tried to get used to the flesh and bone that now encased him in sturdy, solid warmth. Tricksters, he now knew, always ran a little hot compared to other beings like humans.<p>

_Well_, the voice inside his head—or was it the other way around?—said expectantly. _What do you think?_

"It's strange," he answered aloud, he voice sounding strange now that he had ears to hear it.

_Agreed_, the voice replied. _Are you moving my- our toes or am I? I can't tell._

"There is no distinction. There is no you and there is no me," he said. "Now there's only us."

_Then how am I still here? I am still here, aren't I?_

"Of course," he agreed. "You are here just as I am, our personalities haven't yet converged. There may be some initial confusion but this will change in time. Soon we will be united, but for now we are still too new."

_More strangeness to look forward to then?_

"Indeed."

There was a soft popping sound he recognized as the harbinger of a deity's appearance and the sound was followed by a wry voice that said, "Talking to yourself now Loki? Oh how the mighty have fallen."

He turned towards the voice and there stood a dour blonde woman in odd clothing.

Gabriel's request for the woman's identity was met with a flood of information. Her name was Atropos and she was a Greek Fate. She was dressed strangely because she traveled through timelines, running around snipping the threads of peoples' lives. She was not to be trusted.

"Hello Atropos," he greeted shortly. "Still as undesirable as ever, I see."

"Loki. Still causing trouble as always," she smirked back, her cold blue eyes assessing him almost clinically over her glasses.

"Well, I do try."

"How would you like to succeed?"

A laugh bubbled up out of Loki and he shook a chastising finger at her. "That sounds suspiciously like an offer, Atty."

"Good, because it is."

_Tread carefully here, _he told himself.

"What kind of offer are we talking about?"

Atropos shrugged a shoulder. "Nothing too terribly taxing. A little influencing of humans, some light manipulation and few other duties as assigned."

He was about to tell her she could go shove her scissors somewhere very unpleasant when, coyly, she added, "Oh, and did I mention this little job involves time travel? Say… fourteen thousand years down the road of your very own timeline?"

Nowthat _was_ interesting. Both Loki and Gabriel had the ability to travel anywhere they chose to in time but things got a hell of a lot trickier when it came to surfing your own timeline. There were all sorts of cosmic shit-storms that came with trying to get a peek at your own future, but there were no rules against letting someone _else_ show you.

"And why come to me?"

The Fate smiled like she was in pain. "You're a Trickster and I'm in need of a little trickery."

"Why not go to Anansi or Puck or Coyote?"

"Because this requires more finesse than those bumbling fools are capable of providing."

"I've been accused of a lot of things in my time," he smirked, "finesse usually isn't one of them."

"Are you interested or not?" she snapped. "I need an answer."

"Well, isn't that the popular phrase of the day," Loki mused.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing," he replied. "Never mind."

"So? Are you in?"

Gabriel gave a mental shrug of indifference that said he would leave this decision entirely up to Loki. The Trickster knew he should be cautious, but the allure of the Fate's offer was just too enticing.

"All right," Loki declared. "Yes. Let's go have some fun."


	8. Chapter 7: Settling

**Author's Note: **I told you I'd have another chapter for you soon! Just a warning though, this one came relatively quickly because I already had over half of it written so I may be a bit longer for Chapter 8 to come out.

I'd really, really like to thank everyone for their kind, thoughtful, and constructive reviews. You guys are so great and you really keep me going with this thing! So thank you so, so much and please, keep me in the loop on how you're enjoying the story!

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><p><strong>Chapter Seven<strong>

**Settling**

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><p>"Could you possibly have settled down to the old life and forgotten the fairyland through which you had passed? My child, I do not think so." – Earnest Simpson<p>

"Any idiot can face a crisis. It's day to day living that wears you out." – Anton Chekov

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><p>Things moved fast once Florence and her army of bandage bandits found out Jo was awake. It wouldn't be fair to say they got kicked out, but the message was clear. 'It was lovely to meet you, now get out.'<p>

He was perfectly okay with that, having had more than his fill of Our Ladies of Perpetual Nagging. Jo was a little more concerned about their newfound homelessness, but he assured her that they had a place to stay all lined up. He told her all about the Council and Martha and her offer to put a roof over their heads for a while and that made Jo feel marginally better about leaving the infirmary.

Once actually out and about she was transfixed by the town, marveling at all the colors and sounds and smells that had been lacking across the boundary of the river. When he pointed out that she'd just come from an alternate timeline where she could stop and smell all the wilted daisies she wanted, Jo merely shrugged and remarked that her little vacation to the land of the living had made her appreciate those things more.

Martha's boarding house was an elaborate pink home near the center of town with lots of yellow trimmed brick-a-bract and a gleaming white bunny statue planted on the front lawn by the porch that Gabriel insisted was watching him.

"It's staring at me," he furtively whispered to Jo as they waited on the front steps for Martha to let them in, keeping one eye on the door and one trained on the bunny.

"It's a statue," reasoned Jo. "It can't stare at you. It's made out of rock."

Gabriel nodded but kept glancing at the bunny uncertainly.

Martha welcomed them inside with a cherry explosion of old-lady enthusiasm, wrapping them both up in her two massive, flabby arms and kissing them on their cheeks like that whiskery aunt you always try—and ultimately fail—to avoid. She made ham sandwiches for lunch with lettuce and tomato grown in her garden out back, while chatting with Gabriel about his job at Edgar's shop and with Jo about her interests.

"If you're a dab hand at baked goods I'm sure Hattie could use a hand in the bakery," said Martha.

"You can count on me to consistently burn toast," Jo replied.

Across the table Gabriel smiled at her with what felt to her like pride, of all things. "It gets hot as hell in that bakery by 8 am. And who wants to get up at the crack of dawn to knead dough?"

"Are you any good at gardening? Roger who runs the nursery is always looking for help. Not many people really know what they're doing in a garden," Martha told her.

"Black thumb," responded Jo with forced regret.

"Guy's a little too in love with his plants if you know I mean," came another aside from Gabriel. "Does things to trees that shouldn't be allowed."

It went on like this for the rest of the meal, Martha suggesting places of employment, Jo expressing strong to mild apathy for said suggestions whilst Gabriel finished things off with reasons why she wouldn't want to work here or there anyway. After going through about just about every business in town during his own trial days, he now considered himself something of an expert on the subject. Finally, after about the twelfth comment from the angelic trickster, Jo turned incredulously to Gabriel and asked, "Just how many jobs have you had here?"

It was Martha who answered, pouncing on the question before Gabriel could even form a response. "Oh, you name it and our boy here has made a go of it. We're lucky Edgar took him on or he'd still be idle," Martha said, shaking her head a little to herself and remarking, "Nothing worse than being idle."

"Can't have that," Gabriel agreed sarcastically, receiving the bond-equivalent of a sharp kick under the table from Jo and replying with the bond-equivalent of sticking out his tongue in return.

"Real mature," he heard her mutter, a small smile hiding behind her exasperation.

After lunch Martha showed them upstairs to their rooms, Jo's done in calming blues, Gabriel's in vibrant reds, their doors mirrored across from one another in a peach colored hallway. Besides their rooms and the shared bath, there were three other rooms along the corridor. Martha explained how those rooms would also be occupied soon. They were about to receive another influx of new residents. She left them each with another smacking kiss on the cheek and wishes for a good night's rest.

Sure enough, two days later a few new people wandered into the boarding house like wayward sheep, two men and a woman, all looking dazed and lost. The sun had set by the time of their arrival, their clothes a little threadbare and road worn, their faces drawn and exhausted. Martha apparently already had some information on the new people and introductions were made all around.

There was Paul, the straight-laced thirty-something school teacher with buzz-cut hair gone prematurely gray and sad blue eyes; Victoria, the beautiful but aloof ad exec; and Tim, who was an anemic twenty year old computer science major with thick glasses and bad acne.

Jo itched to ask them about their time outside the Settlement, to compare notes, but Martha sent her a sharp glare before she could even really get a full question out.

"You all must be so tired," their hostess announced pointedly. "There'll be time enough for stories later. Let's get you three into some beds before you collapse." Martha looked squarely at Jo and, despite all the oppressive attention and grandmotherly coddling, Jo felt, for the first time since meeting Martha, as if she was being dominated. "Jo, I'm sure you remember how tiring your first few days here were? Maybe we'll let our guests settle in before barking questions at them?"

While Martha went back to fussing over Paul, Victoria and Tim, Jo and Gabriel exchanged a look that conveyed their respective readings of the situation; Jo trading her irritation with his uncharacteristic apathy. He was willing to give their benefactor the benefit of the doubt on this one. He felt that Martha was maybe just a little overwhelmed by all the new people and had snapped at Jo out of stress. He felt Jo just needed to be a little more understanding.

Jo's irritation spread to the glare she sent him but before she could call him out on his lack of support they were all being marched up the stairs to the guest floor.

Paul ended up in the orange room next to Gabriel, Victoria in the yellow room next to Jo, and Kevin got shuffled into the green room next to the shared bath. Martha made sure everyone was comfortable and then disappeared up the stairs, presumably to her own room on the third floor. Gabriel and Jo watched from the hallway as Paul, Victoria and Tim all silently disappeared behind their respective doors and when they were gone and it was just the two of them left standing in the hall, Gabriel leaned against the doorframe of his room and looked wearily across the hall at her, still glaring at him.

He shuddered as she sent a fresh gust of cold displeasure his way but he still stepped away from his door, moving as if to cross to her, prefacing his movement with a desire to smooth things over, opening his mouth to apologize.

She slammed the door his in face.

He stood there for a moment, willing his apology through the door, until he felt a sudden spike of anger and heard something thump hard against the door. Her shoe, if he had to guess.

_Fine_, he projected. _Be that way._

Breakfast the next morning was an impressive affair with Martha going all out, setting down mountains of stacked pancakes, piles of crispy bacon, fields of fluffy scrambled eggs, and row after row of fresh-baked biscuits.

"Eat, eat," she urged everyone before bustling back over to the stove to cook up some more.

Paul and Gabriel dug in with enthusiasm and Kevin just about inhaled a plate and a half of food before settling into an alternating sort of pattern between breathing and shoveling more food into his mouth. Meanwhile Jo was working through about a fraction of food the guys were, while Victoria just sat and glared in disgust at everything on the table.

"What's the matter, dear?" Martha said, noticing Victoria's lack of appetite. "Aren't you hungry?"

"I don't really eat breakfast," Victoria replied stiffly.

From the brunette's spindly arms and slightly gaunt face, Jo got the impression that Victoria didn't really eat much of anything. She'd never really understood that kind of thing, controlling things with food, and it made even less sense to her now that they were all stuck in Limbo where, something told her, it was pretty much impossible to gain weight. She rolled her eyes and Gabriel must've picked up on her general sentiment because he let out a faint snort of amusement over his eggs.

The days fell into something of a routine for everyone at the boarding house. Get up, have breakfast, go out and try to land yourself a job; or, in Gabriel's case, go to the job you already managed to land. Jo got over being pissed at Gabriel but still kept her distance where Martha was concerned, not totally sold on the whole cuddly grandma thing the old lady had going on.

In something of a surprise turn of events Gabriel and Paul struck up a strange sort of friendship built around things like love of food and off-color jokes. Most mornings the two men would jabber at each other over the breakfast table all the way out the door and down the street.

Finding jobs for Victoria and Paul proved a lot easier than it had for Gabriel. Paul found easy placement with the school teaching math to a bunch of blank-faced pre-teens Gabriel insisted were somehow defective. Victoria picked up a job down at the Settlement newspaper, The Chronicle, writing ad copy and local announcements. Within a few days both were moving out of the boarding house and into their work-supplied housing, as was the custom in the Settlement.

Things were a little harder for Tim, who like Gabriel was loaded down with a skill set that was all but useless now. Who needed a computer science major when there were no computers? At least Edgar had taken pity on Gabriel and given him a job stacking books, widely considered the easiest job around.

Jo was also having a hard time of it, but not for the same reason. Potential employers were offering her positions only to have her turn them down left, right, and center. When Gabriel asked her about it she'd just shrugged and told him that nothing had felt right. After a few weeks he began to see the same anxious expressions he remembered people had with him when he was failing from one job to another. For some reason people were starting to worry about her, and that made Gabriel worry.

It was actually Gabriel's fault that she did eventually find something to do. They had all been sitting in the parlor at the boarding house one night, Gabriel antsy and anxious to go out and _do_ something, when Martha primly suggested he amble his anxious ass down to the bar in town.

"There's a bar in town," came Gabriel's hopeful squeak.

"Of course there is," Martha replied. "The Tavern. You know that grubby old place next to Dexter's grocery. The one with the green door? I'm sure you've noticed it."

Jo had been sitting curled up on the sofa beside Gabriel with a book he'd brought her from Edgar's, her bare feet stuck behind his back because even with the fire in the fireplace the room was still cold and Gabriel was especially warm. Sensing what would be coming she'd clutched her book a little tighter in her hands even before Gabriel looked over at her, his expression pleading, his insistence tugging at her like a child would tug on his mother's shirtsleeves for attention.

"No," she'd said before he could even open his mouth.

"Why not?" he'd all but whined.

"Because I'm perfectly happy right here," Jo replied, burrowing her feet down deeper between the couch and his back. "You go if you want."

Gabriel folded his arms and settled into a petulant pout she could feel somewhere between her shoulder blades.

"Stop it."

"What?"

"Pouting."

"M'not."

"I can _feel_ you doing it." She shifted against the cushions as if to emphasize the fact.

"C'mon," he whined. "Please? You'll have fun, I promise."

Jo sighed and considered his insistence, his anxious energy, and the hopeful look on his face. She caved.

"Okay." She set her book down on the table by the sofa. "Fine, I'll go."

In an impulsive move he leaned over and pressed a messy, smacking kiss to her cheek. "You won't regret it, Jo-Jo."

"I already do," she replied even as she let him take her hand and lead her up and out the door.

The Old Tavern, or just "The Tavern" as the locals called it, was a rough and tumble sort of place with blacked out windows and a thick layer of dust covering everything from the floor to the rickety old wooden tables and chairs scattered around the room. The bar itself snaked along the far wall and there was an old jukebox in one corner blasting out ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down," while clumps of patrons shouted at one another over the cacophony. It was one part old western saloon and one part seedy biker bar and Jo had never felt more at home.

"I know, right?" said Gabriel loudly over the din, responding to her instant admiration for the place with some appreciation of his own. He led her along, winding through the milling shouting crowd of patrons and sidled up to the bar. He waved two fingers at the bartender to get his attention.

The bartender was a tall man in his late thirties. His giant build combined with straight flax hair and bright blue eyes made him look sort of like a Viking in a black polo shirt and khakis. He nodded at them on approach and sighed wearily before either of them even got an order out.

"What'll you have?" he said, his monotone shout sounding strangely apprehensive.

"Gimme a Lemon Drop," said Gabriel, completely serious.

She almost burst out laughing, but actually it made a strange sort of sense. Of course Gabriel—who called her every kind of candy you could think of and who dumped nearly a metric ton of sugar into his coffee—would order a Lemon Drop; one of the sweetest drinks on any menu.

Jo's mind conjured up an image of a rocks glass with a few fingers of dry, oaky whiskey the color of warm amber. It was the kind of drink her dad would nurse after coming home from a hard hunt. The kind her mother would swipe out of a protesting Bobby's hands before he could even get the glass up to his lips. The kind she'd watched her mom and Castiel knock back in shot glasses on their last night on earth.

"And the lady'll have whiskey, water back," added Gabriel to the bartender. Jo had to look around for a moment before she realized that he'd meant her.

She looked at him, puzzled that he'd pegged so exactly what she'd been wanting, but then she remembered the bond, their connection, and she wasn't puzzled anymore. Of course he would know. Just like how he would probably know she wouldn't even finish the whiskey before switching to beer. The mental image of the rocks glass was replaced by a green glass bottle so cold that sweat beaded down its sides and dripped rings onto the wood of the bar.

"And could we also get a Heineken with that?" Gabriel amended in near tandem with her thoughts, shooting her a rakish smile full of self-pride.

"Show off," she muttered, grinning a little despite her words.

The bartender, looking harried, sighed again and glanced back toward the shelves where bottles of booze were lined up side-by-side like soldiers at the ready. He looked back to Jo and Gabriel, then back to the shelf and then back at them again, shaking his head. "Um… I'm not sure… I don't think I have that."

Gabriel blinked and Jo could feel his bewilderment at the bartender's anxiety. "And which one aren't you sure about?" asked Gabriel gruffly.

The bartenders blue eyes went wide and startled, by what, Jo wasn't sure. "Well… all of it?"

Jo's eyes scanned the room, taking in the press of people around the bar, the unhappy faces attached to unhappy people, all of whom had empty hands where drinks should have been. Some nearby people in the crowd had begun to mutter the words "bad placement" between themselves and others would nod in a sad sort of agreement.

She looked at the bartender who by this point looked close to a total meltdown, the stress of inexperience and a busy night making his broad shoulders slump. "Have you ever run a bar before?" she asked. She had a strong suspicion that the answer would be "no," or near enough.

"I filled in a few times for my buddy at our college bar," said the distraught Viking. "But that was years ago and I was half drunk most of the time anyway."

"Yeah," Jo said, "that sounds about right."

She rolled her eyes and decided to take pity on him, rounding the bar to come around behind it. She gave everything a cursory glance, taking a quick inventory of the bar's visible offerings, getting her bearings, before looking at the bartender.

"What's your name?" she inquired.

"Chris," the bartender replied.

"Chris? Okay Chris, your one job tonight is to make sure that _that_," she jerked her thumb towards a large metal box located beneath the middle of the bar, "stays filled. Okay?"

Gabriel passed Jo a confused smile over the bar, "What're you _doing_?"

She grinned. "What I'm good at."

The rest of the night passed in a blur of activity for Jo; taking orders, mixing cocktails, pulling draughts, running drinks, handling payment and calculating tabs, making Chris haul more ice to fill the ever-dwindling icebox beneath the bar. Before she knew it she looked up, took what felt like her first breath in hours, and announced last-call.

Gabriel, she noticed, was sitting at the battered upright piano at the other end of the bar, the jukebox long since played out. He was playing an old Irish drinking tune on the keys and getting the last dregs of patrons to sing along with him.

"_And it's home boys _

_Home I'd like to be, home for a while in my old count-a-ry_

_Where the oak and the ash and the bonny elm tree_

_They're all a-growing greener in my old count-a-ry_," he sang, pleasantly in-tune for once, leading a few unsteady drunks through the chorus.

"_There was an apprentice lived in Strawberry Lane_

_Loved by her master and her mistress just the same_

'_Til a young sailor lad came sailing o'er the sea_

_And that was the beginning of her misery_

"_This young maid being innocent she thought it was no harm_

_To go into his bed for to keep our good lad warm_

_He hugged her and he kissed her and he called her his sweet dear_

_He said 'I wish, my love this night had been as long as a year'_

"_It was early the next morning when the sailor lad arose_

_And down into her apron he put hands all full of gold_

'_Take this my darling dear for all the mischief that I've done_

_Last night I may have left you with a daughter or a son,"_ he belted out, causing a detonation of laughter from the crowd.

"_And if it be a girl child you can dandle her on your knee_

_And if it be a boy child then you'll call him after me_

_And when he is a man, you can dress him up in blue_

_He'll go skipping up the rigging like his daddy used to do!"_

Absently wiping down the bar, Jo watched from across the room as he brought the song to a flourishing close before gathering together his drunken little fan club and leading them all towards the door like a pied piper, charming them along with jokes and asides that kept them howling with laughter. When he'd shooed the last of them the door Jo was left with an exhausted Chris hanging onto a broom for dear life and a barroom that looked like Dresden after the bombing. Gabriel, looking just as bone tired as he felt to Jo, shuffled over to slouch against the bar, playfully leered up at her through his lashes, smirking with a pleasant but wary sort of satisfaction.

"So, was it fun?"

She grinned a little, mirroring him by slouching across the bar so they were face-to-face. "Yeah, I guess. You were right, it was fun."

"Wait, so you're actually admitting I was right about something?" he teased. "I hope it didn't hurt too much. I know it was your first time. I tried to be gentle but," he shook his head in exaggerated lament, "my urges…they just took over."

"I'll never be the same," she agreed.

"That's what they all say, baby," he preened. "That's what they all say."

She laughed and shook her head, enjoying the moment and the feeling of camaraderie passing between them. His whole being seemed to be smiling at her, inside her, and she realized that she'd never felt him this happy before. There was always an edge of sadness to Gabriel, something that never went away and mostly centered on his family, but right then, in that moment, it faded into an almost undetectable smudge on his emotional pallet.

Gabriel's eyes were as gold as she'd ever seen them and they were trained on her face like it was the most interesting thing he'd seen since the creation of time. Somewhere deep inside her, some small place between her ribs and her stomach, something tugged at her insistently. It wasn't like the nauseous feeling she got when he was lying or trying to hide something, it was more like the feeling she'd had right before she'd died; safe, warm, loved.

Warmth flooded through her veins and her chest started to ache a little, but not in a bad way. Gabriel's hand moved to reach out across the divide and met hers in the space between, fingers closing over knuckles, their palms slotting together like they'd been cut from the same mold. What felt like lighting cracked across her skin, crawling into every pore and electrifying her entire being until nothing else existed for her but Gabriel. His eyes, his scent like sugar and rain, the feel of his warm skin against hers; the sensations all clamored inside her as if they were something that belonged there.

Without either of them noticing, they'd drifted together over the bar, bending like plants in search of sunlight until they were practically breathing the same air. His breath was warm and sweet in her mouth and she could smell something else beneath the sugar and the rain, something that smelled like fresh cut grass and ozone. It reminded her of sunlight.

Gradually she tipped forward over the bar, wanting to see if he tasted like sugar and rain and sunlight. He leaned in too; close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him. He licked his lips and her eyes followed the quick passage of his tongue over that wicked smirking mouth. She tilted her head, his eyes closed, and for a moment they both stopped breathing as —

_Brrrrrinnnng_!

The sound cut through the moment like a ship through water, leaving them dazed and bobbing around looking for the source of the interruption, jerking apart from each other like guilty children.

_Brrrrrinnnng!_

Chris dropped the broom, the wooden handle clattering loudly against the floor and they looked over to find him white-faced and staring fixedly at the wall. They followed his stare over to an inconspicuous black phone hanging on the wall beside the bar where neither of them had noticed it before.

_Brrrrrinnnng_

It occurred to them then that they'd yet to see any other phones in the Settlement. People usually just sent messages by post or word of mouth. But now here was a phone and it was ringing.

_Brrrrrinnnng_

"Someone gonna answer that?" said Gabriel. Both he and Jo looked at Chris expectantly. He was, technically, still the only one who worked there.

Chris seemed to draw himself up then, bolstered by some resigned sort of determination, and took several heavy steps across the floor towards the phone, swiping it from its cradle with his big meaty hand and pressing the receiver to his ear. Jo and Gabriel waited for something to happen and for a moment there was only silence as Chris nodded and quietly listened to who or whatever was on the other end of the line.

"Yes," he said gravely. "Yes, I understand. Thank you."

He hung up the phone, dazed, his hand still clutched around the receiver sitting in its cradle. Slowly he turned back around to face them but couldn't seem to meet their eyes; his face was even paler than it had been before. "They fired me," he told the floorboards.

"Why?" urged Jo. "Because of tonight?"

"I guess it was a lot of things," he replied, eyes flicking up to meet hers. "They want you to run the bar."

"…Oh," she breathed, feeling both guilty and awkward about the situation. "I'm… I'm sorry."

"Hey," Gabriel said sternly, pushing away from the bar and glaring at Chris, "it's not her fault you suck at your job, pal."

"_Gabe_!"

"No," he said, waving away her attempt to rein him in. "It's not your fault and this guy has no right to make you feel like it is."

"I _know_ it's not my fault," said Jo, smiling her regrets towards Chris, "Dude, you do kinda suck."

He nodded. "Yeah, I know."

"But that doesn't mean that I can't have compassion," she directed back to Gabriel. "I feel bad _for _him, not because of him."

"Well stop it," he whined, rolling his shoulders like something sticky and cold was trying to climb down the back of his shirt.

"I really should've seen this coming," Chris mused. "I never should've taken this job but… everyone was just so desperate for someone to do it after the last person left and… I should've held out longer." He dug around in the pocket of his khakis, producing a ring of keys. He held them in his hand for a moment, staring down at them, before sliding them across the bar to Jo. "Guess you'll be needing these," he said.

Jo nodded and took the keys, shoving them down into her pocket. "Thanks. I'll take care of the place."

He laughed, shaking his head as he made towards the back door. "Burn it down for all I care," he called over his shoulder. "By morning it won't matter."

And with that he was gone.

In the silence of the bar, Jo felt a little listless, uncertain. The place suddenly felt too big, too unfamiliar, too much responsibility for her to handle on her own.

Gabriel tried to be subtle about the warm pat-on-the-shoulder, buck-up kiddo reassurance he sent through the bond as he rounded the bar and came to lean on it beside her, their shoulders pressing together.

"Pleasant guy."

Jo laughed a little, shook her head and settled an easy smile on him. "Help me put this place back together?"

"Hey, _I_ don't work here," he smirked, dodging just in time to miss the bar-towel she snapped at him. "I just come for the booze."

"Dick," she muttered, still smiling as she began to gather glasses strewn around the bar.

"Aw, sprinkles, you just don't appreciate me, do you?" he teased, going over to retrieve the broom Chris had dropped.

"Help me get this place up and running and you can drink for free," she said. "How's that for appreciation."

"Sold!"

Jo rolled her eyes but the smile on her face didn't slide an inch.

* * *

><p>She got up early the next day and went over to the bar. Everything looked exactly the same as when they'd left the night before. Gabriel had stayed late to help clean up and reset everything and all their work was still untouched; chairs upturned over tables, glasses stacked, bottles marked, garnish prepped. She didn't know what she'd been expecting, maybe to come in and find that Chris had trashed the place out of spite or something, but nothing was out of place and he was nowhere to be seen.<p>

She was balancing the register, stacking all the little yellow slips of paper called "letters,"—which was short for "letters of debt,"—that served as currency in the Settlement, when the front door opened and a lanky young man with short-cropped brown hair came in pushing a keg-laden dolly.

"Hey," the baby-faced guy greeted. "I'm Davis."

"Jo," she replied, watching him wheel the dolly over to the bar and set down a clip board.

"I'm from Dexter's," he explained, name-dropping the town grocer. "Dex usually has me make the keg delivery on Tuesdays but seeing how you're just starting out he wanted to make sure you were all stocked up before the weekend."

"Okay."

"It's twenty letters for the order and another five if you want something special for the next delivery," he said with a bright, happy smile.

Jo counted out the twenty letters and handed them over before slipping two more across the bar. "These are for you," she said, indicating the slips.

"Thanks!" Davis beamed. "Nobody's tipped me since the chick who ran the bar before Chris. You're all right."

Jo shrugged. If she'd learned anything from her mom about running a bar it was two things; play nice with your distributors and always tip the delivery people. Things tended to go a lot smoother that way.

"So, you all moved in yet?" Davis asked, unloading the heavy tanks of beer and dragging them around behind the counter.

"Moved in?" she echoed. They'd been staying at Martha's for well over three weeks so she couldn't figure out what he was talking about.

"Yeah," Davis grunted, righting one of the kegs beside its tap. "I know you and your man-friend are staying up at the boarding house," he said and for just a second Jo's thoughts stumbled over the odd phrasing of Gabriel as her 'man-friend'. "But now that you're running this place," he continued, "I guess people just assumed you'd be moving into the cabin."

"Cabin? What cabin?"

The cabin, it turned out, was just behind the bar. When Davis told her this she must've made a face because he just laughed and shook his head, insisting, "It's actually kind of nice. I swear."

Despite Davis's insistence she had her doubts, imagining the grubby back-alleys and bins full of trash that had been the norm in the few city bars she'd tended, and the dusty wasteland of forgotten junk that had occupied the strip of space behind the roadhouse. She said as much to Davis who just laughed again and offered to show her around back there, leading her through the back Chris had disappeared through the night before.

He was right about one thing, it was kinda nice. The bar backed to a crystal clear lake with a view of a snow-capped mountain in the distance. There were large shady trees bracketing the perimeter, offering privacy and giving you the sense of being miles away from everything and not just stuffed behind a bar in town. The cabin itself was a little run-down though.

Actually, with weather-beaten plywood siding, a patchy roof, dirt-clouded windows and a dark brown paint job that was peeling along every seam and edge, frankly the term 'run-down' might've been a little too charitable. When a breeze rustled through the big weeping willow that hugged one side of the cabin the light hit the windows in such a way as to make the place look downright creepy.

"So, I can live here?" she confirmed with her happy new acquaintance.

Davis shrugged. "Sure. I guess. I mean, the property is part of the bar and that's yours now so… yeah. I'd fix it up a little though," he said. "Chris was a mess, poor guy."

Jo nodded to herself. "I think I might just do that."

* * *

><p>When it came to the cabin Gabriel took a little more convincing.<p>

When he arrived at the bar later she took him back there to see the cabin and he was extremely unimpressed, standing before the place like she was telling him she wanted to live in a wet cardboard box in an ally.

"Okay," he said, frowning at her. "So, lemme get this straight, you want to live _here_…in the murder house."

"It's not a murder house," she snapped, irritation and possessiveness mixing together in a way that told him she was already attached to the place.

"Really," he scoffed, motioning to the cabin, "because it kinda looks like a murder house. Like any minute now some chainsaw wielding psycho is going to come screaming outta the bushes and try to hack us up into teeny, tiny little pieces… and I should know. I've made that happen."

"All it needs is a little work, some fixing up. You have to see the potential."

"I _do_ see the potential," he insisted. "I see the potential for a giant hole in the ground where this crap-shack used to be."

"It's not that bad."

"Look," he said, pointing excitedly toward the cabin, "this is where the edge of the giant hole can start and over there, that's where the deep bottomless pit will live."

"Are you going to help me with this or not?" she asked sharply.

He wanted to say 'not,' which was his knee jerk reaction, followed by a need to pester her about this whole thing. What was wrong with Martha's where they had food and warmth and running water and a whole entire roof over their heads? He wasn't even sure he knew how to hammer a nail without doing damage to himself or others. But she just kept looking at him with those big, sad brown eyes of hers and he knew how this was going to go.

"Mmmmm," he pretended to consider, before finally tipping over the edge all the way and succumbing to that now familiar mixture of nagging expectation and quiet hope she projected at him when she wanted something. "Okay, yeah, fine."

A broad smile began to form on her face, "Really?"

"Really, really."

He nearly laughed at the pure, happy energy of her excitement. Jo didn't usually get this excited about things and he had to wonder if it was the prospect of getting out of the boarding house or just the plain old anticipation of a project that didn't revolve around their relatively ordinary everyday routine, because he could definitely sympathize with the latter.

"Well," said Gabriel with resignation, "we should probably go inside and see how many corpses we're gonna have to throw away."

The cabin turned out to be actually kind of nice inside, if a little small. The front door opened to a main room with an old sofa positioned in front of a large stone fireplace bookended by two comfy looking chairs. In the corner there was a small kitchen with a sink, a stove, an ice box and a few dusty shelves hung over one wall.

The only other door in the main room led to the cabin's single bedroom with a broken dresser, a small writing desk, an old wooden chair, and a rusted-out double bed with a grey pancaked mattress that sagged in the middle. Another door in the bedroom led to a plain, no-frills bathroom with all the basics and a tiny closet big enough for a couple hangers-full of clothes, a few pairs of shoes and not much else.

Gabriel walked from one end of the cabin to the other, examining everything with a critical eye. He finished his tour back in front of the fireplace where he collapsed onto the moth-eaten blue-plaid sofa, sending a cloud of dust billowing up into the air around him. Coughing and waving a hand in front of his face to clear the cloud, he grinned sardonically. "I think it's great."

In the kitchen area Jo closed the icebox with an audible slam. "Don't be an ass."

"I _do_," he countered. "I think it's great. Or at least it will be once we get through with the place."

"That's what I've been _telling_ you," she grinned, looking around like she was picturing where everything would go and how she'd organize this or that. "I don't know, it just feels…_homey_, y'know?"

"Sure, if you were raised in a dustbowl."

"All it needs is a little cleaning," she replied, "a fresh coat of paint, maybe some new furniture-"

"Not the couch," interjected Gabriel, caressing the ugly upholstery fondly. "We're keeping the couch."

"O…kay," said Jo, navigating around the arm of the sofa so she stood in front of it, folding her arms as she looked over the old, dust-ragged piece of furniture, finding nothing especially redeemable about the thing. "Not my first choice, but fine."

"Sit down," he insisted.

"What?" She looked at him like he'd just announced he was going to try and eat twenty eggs whole or something. "Why?"

"Just…._sit down_," he pressed. "Trust me. You'll see."

Jo huffed but settled herself down into the cushions carefully so as to avoid stirring up another cloud of dust, and promptly let out a sigh that only began to express the blissful comfort and utter relaxation she encountered. The sofa conformed to her body, enveloping her in a firm but yielding softness, providing just enough support to keep her from sinking into the thing and getting stuck. It was, simply put, wonderful.

"Holy _fuck,_" she sighed; all the muscles in her body relaxing like she was in the middle of a world-class massage.

Gabriel managed a languid nod of his head. "Yep."

"We are _so_ keeping this couch."

Another dreamy nod from Gabriel, "Yep."

As loath as either of them was to get up, there was work to be done and three hours later found Gabriel bagging up the last of all the crap Chris had left scattered behind and Jo wedged into a corner battling the last stronghold of dust in the cabin. When they were finished with that they stood in the middle of the room, looking around at all they had accomplished. It wasn't very much.

They were still left with uneven floorboards, a broken stove, a toilet that barely qualified as indoor plumbing, and something that may or may not have been living in the walls.

"Yeah," sighed Jo, "We're gonna need some tools…and stuff."

And that was how they found themselves wandering down to the hardware store in town. Max, the personable old man who ran the titular Max's Hardware, smiled warmly at them as they came in. This surprised Gabriel as he'd somehow nearly flooded the entire shop during the trial day he'd spent there. Then he realized that the old man was smiling fondly at Jo and probably didn't even notice that Gabriel had accompanied her into the store.

"Hey there sweetheart," Max greeted with a friendly twinkle in his eye. "How've you been?"

"Hey, Max!" Jo grinned with affection.

Of all her potential employers she'd liked Max the best. He reminded her of the perfect grandfather, the kind she'd seen on TV as a kid and wished she could have. All her own grandparents had died before she'd been born and she'd always sort of wondered what it would've been like to have someone like that in her life.

When Max had asked her to stay on at the hardware store, she'd very nearly said yes. Now she was glad she'd held out for the bar where, sometimes, it almost felt like she was home again, like any minute her mom was going to come out of the back room bitching about Ash eating all the olives again or something.

"So," said Max, "what can I do ya for?"

"We're fixing up the cabin behind the bar," Jo told him. "We could use some supplies and stuff to get us going."

Max cast a vaguely disapproving look at Gabriel and came around his check-out counter to lead Jo down a few aisles, advising her on what they'd need to make the cabin habitable again. As they walked away Gabriel could also hear a few of Max's veiled objections concerning Jo and Gabriel sharing the cabin together, all of them aimed at Gabriel and all of them decidedly negative.

Gabriel rolled his eyes and thought about saying something scathing, but kept his mouth shut. Like he cared what that old coot thought anyway. Besides, Jo was doing a hell of a job tactfully dismissing the old codger's misinformed opinions about poor impressionable young Jo shacking up with a man apparently almost twice her age and half her worth to the community.

The bell above the door sounded and he looked over to see a woman with a boy of about twelve entering the hardware store. He recognized the woman from around town. With shiny blonde waves of hair, sparkling blue eyes and the busty figure of a pin-up model, she was kind of hard to miss. He thought her name might've been Lindsey or Laura or something and he was pretty sure she ran the beauty salon in town.

The boy, probably her son he figured, going off his similarly blond hair and identical blue eyes. He recognized the child as one of Paul's students. He'd gone over to the school once to have lunch with Paul and there'd been a big group of kids clustered outside the window, watching them with their big empty eyes. Something about the Settlement kids just freaked him out, but he couldn't really put his finger on it. That is, until now.

The boy stood stoically beside his mother, his eyes roaming over the shelves of the store, his expression as blank as a grazing cow's. But that wasn't what tipped him off, at least not _just_ that. Up close like this he could see it, the thing about these kids that made him so unsettled.

"You're _old_!" he exclaimed suddenly, earning the irritated and confounded attention of the woman and the bland stoicism of her kid.

"_Excuse_ me?" gasped the woman, clearly offended by what she'd interpreted as an insult directed towards her.

"What?" squeaked Gabriel, "Did I say that out loud?"

"Gabe?" said Jo pointedly, returning with Max and a basketful of supplies, "Everything okay?"

"Huh? Yeah," he answered casually, making himself grin as he tried to be as nonchalant as possible about edging away from the kid, rambling, "Sure, fine. Good. We're good. Why wouldn't we be good? 'Cause we are."

"Uh-_huh_," said Jo, unconvinced.

"Linda," Max greeted, nodding a hello to the kid's mom, "I'll be right with you."

"No rush, Max," said Linda. "We just need a new chain for Kevin's bike when you get the chance."

Max led Jo over to the check-out counter where he rang everything up while Gabriel kept casting wary glances at Kevin, his mom glaring back and Jo frowning at Gabriel's apparent sudden obsession with this kid.

All together Jo ended up handing over forty letters for everything. As soon as Max had it all bagged up into about five sacks Gabriel snatched them all off the counter, hooking his other arm around Jo and grinned awkwardly as he towed her backwards towards the door.

"You folks have a nice day now," he called, pushing through the store's chiming door and ignoring Jo's confused irritation at the scene he was causing.

When they got to the street she pushed him off, marching off in the direction of the bar. "What the hell was that about?"

"I _told_ you those kids were creepy!" he insisted, stomping after her. He then glanced around the street, looking for anyone who might be eavesdropping, and lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"Didn't you see that kid?" he hissed, "He's like Disneyland."

Jo stopped just outside the bar, "I don't know what that means."

Gabriel frantically motioned for her to get inside so she rolled her eyes and went in. He followed in behind her, closing the door and moving across the room to dump all the bags on the counter.

"All right," he sighed, hopping up to sit on the counter while she stood before him, looking expectant, "Humans 101-"

"I think I know a _little_ something about humans," she interrupted, "seeing as how I _am_ one."

"Yeah, but were you there when it was being decided how you guys would work?" he countered, "No, you weren't. So shush."

She held up her hands and then folded them lightly; waiting for him to say whatever craziness he was going to come up with.

"Right, so, humans," he began. "When a human man and a human woman love each other very much… or just get really, really drunk …"

"Okay, wait," she stopped him, "What does this have to do with anything."

He gave her a look so she rolled her eyes and motioned for him to go on.

"When someone makes a kid, all the flesh and blood and gross stuff happens down on Earth, but when it comes time for that kid to get a soul, that happens upstairs, okay?"

"Okay."

He could see she didn't totally get where he was going with this so he tried to frame it a different way.

"Think of it as being a lot like banking. When they're doing the nasty, sometimes Mommy and Daddy humans write up a withdrawal slip, send it up to heaven, where it goes to the Repository where-"

"What's the Repository?"

"Like a giant soul bank. Anyway, the request goes to the Repository where all the new souls are stored. How do they get there? Don't ask, Dad only knows. So, a new soul is selected, sent down and wham, bam, thank you mam, you've got yourself a brand-new baby human, ready to go."

"What does any of this have to do with your freak-out back there…or Disneyland?"

"Fakest place on Earth," Gabriel replied. "Think about it. Disneyland is all shiny and pretty on the outside but behind all the paint and plaster, it's just a bunch of particle board and fiberglass masquerading as magic."

"I still don't see what this has to do with you and that kid-"

"He's fake, alright? All the kids here are. Think about it, have you ever once seen one of them freak out or have a temper-tantrum?"

"Well, no-"

"No, because they _aren't_ real kids," he insisted. "They just _look_ like real kids. Real kids misbehave and throw fits because they're brand new, they've never seen or done anything before, and that's _scary _and _exciting_. But _these_ kids, they've seen and done it all. That's why they all look about as fun to be around as planks of wood."

"So, what, they're used souls or something?"

"Makes sense," said Gabriel. "Think about what Persephone said; people live like they're still alive here, remember? That means that people, eventually, are gonna die and new people are gonna be born and if you can't get your hands on new souls, why not start a recycling program?"

Jo looked disgusted. "That's fucking _creepy_."

"See?" he exclaimed. "They're like living, breathing ghosts. Outside they might look shiny and new but inside they're recycled, old, worn out souls that should've been shelved a _long_ time ago. Souls aren't meant to hang around forever. They've got an expiration date and once that's up, _do not_ expose to air because they _will_ go bad. Ever wonder why all the ghosts you come across are loony toons?"

"Do you think that, I mean, do people _know_?"

"Suspect, maybe. I dunno," he said. "But what I _do _know is that you should probably try and stay away from anyone here who's certified pre-owned. Their emotional baggage is probably more than just a few carry-ons."

"Great, living ghosts," She sighed. "Why can't anything ever be easy?"

* * *

><p>It took them two weeks to get the cabin to a place where it was livable again. In the meantime Gabriel left his job at Edgar's shop to help her work on the place during the day and Jo hired him to entertain at the bar in the evenings. When she'd first made the suggestion he'd laughed and made a joke about stripping, but he actually really enjoyed getting to make up songs, tell jokes and just generally make a nuisance of himself for a living.<p>

Jo took Gabriel's 'stay-away-from-the-kids' thing to heart and made a point of turning away any patron under twenty, something that she probably would've been way more lenient towards otherwise. Even with that policy in place they weren't hurting for patrons. Most nights the bar was packed to the seams with people and while she liked to think it was because she ran a great place, she wasn't fooling herself either. There just wasn't that much to do in the Settlement after dark.

For the most part everyone who frequented the bar was just looking for a good time and no one made too much of a fuss about anything. There were a few people who, once they'd tied one on a little too tight, got a little out of hand, but between Jo, Gabriel and everyone else those problems were always dealt with swiftly and quietly and once they were handled things carried on just as before.

Still, there was one patron in particular Gabriel wasn't all that keen on having around. The guy didn't cause problems or anything, not really. He didn't even get on anyone else's nerves. But every time he came in, ambling straight towards the bar and setting himself down at the counter, Gabriel's eyes would follow him the whole way.

Aaron, the other guy who'd fished them out of the river with Edgar. Tall, blond, handsome Aaron.

Gabriel knew he should've felt some sort of gratitude towards the guy for that whole saving-their-asses thing, but he really couldn't manage it; not when Aaron would lean over the bar and flash his lazy, cowboy grin at Jo, saying something that would make her smile. Not when he'd always somehow end up touching her a little too lingeringly when passing over payment for his beer, and definitely not when Jo, her insides fluttering with excitement, would allow it to happen.

He kept quiet about it because he knew that if he brought it up she'd get mad and defensive and he'd end up paying for it. So he watched and stewed and made a point of nodding amiably at Aaron whenever he'd get up to leave. Oh and he made plans too, because he was still himself and how could he not?

So he planned and watched and played the piano or strummed the guitar someone had sold him for six letters and a case of beer, or told jokes, doing his job by making all the drunk people happy, and before he knew it two weeks had flown by and the cabin was ready to move into. Then came the thing they'd both somehow managed to avoid bringing up the whole time they'd been working on the cabin.

"So when things die down a bit over here I'll swing by Martha's," Gabriel remarked as he set up tables for that's night's service, "get all your stuff and bring it back here."

"You can't carry all that stuff by yourself," said Jo, slicing into a lime over at the bar.

"I've seen your room, Princess. You don't exactly have a lot of stuff," he chuckled.

"And what about _your_ stuff?" Jo replied, musing, "I've never seen somebody acquire so much shit in so little time."

"Well _my_ stuff's not going anywhere."

Jo's knife stilled over the lime and she looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean?" he replied. "I'm not moving. I'm staying at Martha's… aren't I?"

She set the knife down on the bar with steady purpose and shrugged, not looking at him. "Yeah, guess so."

"Wait," Gabriel said, abandoning the tables to come and stand across from her at the bar, smirking, "Were you… Did you _want_ me to live at the cabin?"

Jo bit her lip and busied herself with cleaning up the lime juice that had leaked off the cutting board and onto the bar.

"I just thought…" he trailed off. "I mean, I just assumed-"

"Yeah," she said with a forced grin, her voice rougher than before and, lime juice thoroughly cleaned, turned to busy herself with something else. "Me too, I guess."

"Well, wait," he said, getting a hold of her arm to keep her there, "I _did _put in an awful lot of work into that place. It's only fair I get to live there too."

A smile worked its way to the surface of her face, "You don't have to."

"I get the couch though," he demanded. "I've seen that bed and I don't care if it has a new mattress, I bet you anything, the moment you sit on that thing it's gonna collapse."

"You've got yourself a bet," she laughed.

The bed, as it turned out, didn't collapse and Jo smirked triumphantly as he handed over two letters, their standard betting amount, and he went off to the living room to pout. He'd enlisted Edgar and Paul's help in moving all their crap out of the boarding house and over to the cabin and by the time she'd closed the bar up for the night, everything was unpacked and put away.

"Wow!" she'd exclaimed when she came after locking up the bar. "This doesn't even look like the same place."

Gabriel looked up from where he sat on his couch, reading a book, and beamed with pride. Then with eager excitement he hopped up to show her around, telling her about everything he'd done to make the place ready for her.

He'd built a fire in the fireplace and the whole cabin smelled like the apple-cinnamon candle she'd bought from Dexter's grocery the other day. Gabriel had even picked some of the daisies that grew down by the stream and put them in an old tin mug they'd found among Chris' left over stuff. The bed in the other room was neatly made and all her meager belongings had been put away in or on top of the new chest of drawers they'd bought.

"It's great," she said again. "Thank you."

He shrugged. "I just wanted to make you happy."

Leaning in she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight. "You do."

* * *

><p>That night Jo dreamt of flying. She soared above the world as if she were a bird, dipping and diving through cloud cover, dodging around rumbling grey thunderstorms that clapped like cymbals in the most elegant symphony ever created. She danced with the winds and, at night, perched atop a snow-capped mountain. She sang out at the stars and the stars sang back.<p>

And then she was flying again; day turning to night, night into day and back again, and always flying. She loved the feeling of it; the cold whispering mist of the clouds parting around her as she darted through them, the crisp clean air whipping around her, the color of the sky reflected by the vast cerulean ocean below. She was content to fly and fly and fly; but then she caught sight of something amazing and wonderful and new.

Jo swooped down low over the water, hovering above the place where the great ocean met the shore. Beings teamed beneath the surface of the water, thousands upon thousands of glowing, shining beings that swirled and clamored over one another. She studied them, perplexed.

A familiar hum announced his presence even before he spoke, settling beside her and watching the swirling things below the waves.

"Yes," he agreed with her unspoken sentiment, "they are perplexing."

"But beautiful," she added.

"Beautiful?" he echoed, a bit taken aback. "Look how they struggle over one another, how they squirm and fight each other for every inch. How can that be beautiful?"

She smiled softly. "Do you not get the point?"

Silence, and then came his solemn pronouncement. "You have always proved so much better at understanding His jests."

"No," She laughed and shook her head. "No, this is no jest, Brother. Don't you see? This is what _makes_ them beautiful."

Her laughter rang out as the teaming glow shifted beneath the water and the swirling, shining beings began to slowly haul themselves up and out of the great ocean, crawling and clawing their way up the sand. By her side her companion shifted as if to leave but she sent a request for him to remain.

"Share this with me?" she asked, turning to him, only to come face-to-face with the devil himself.

Jo's scream ripped up her throat, dragging her away from the scene above the ocean and planting her back down in her bed in the cabin.

The door, which had been partially closed, banged open so hard it knocked against the wall behind it and ricocheted back, only to be slapped aside again as Gabriel pushed his way into the room. He pounced towards bed and grabbed her up by her shoulders, hauling her up so she was pressed against the headboard.

"Are you all right!" he seemed to be shouting at her, gold eyes flickering from her face to her body and back again as if looking for an injury, "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

"No," she said, moving her hands up to his forearms in response to the vice-like grip he held on her shoulders. "No, I'm- I'm fine, just…a bad dream. That's all."

"You're _not_ fine," he insisted. "You're shaking. Jo, what the hell?"

She hadn't noticed until he'd said something but her body was wracked with small shuddering tremors. Jo made herself let go of his arms and folded back in on herself, but he kept hold on her, unwilling to let her completely retreat.

"I'm fine," she said again.

Gabriel winced, the churning ache in his stomach telling him otherwise. "Jo, just fucking _tell_ me-"

"I don't wanna talk about it," she declared. "Okay? Can that… Can that be okay?"

He hesitated and for a moment she was almost sure he was going to press her about it, but then he just sighed heavily and let go of her shoulders. When he moved she thought he was going to leave but instead he leveraged himself up and over her body, crashing face-down on the mattress beside her, his arms curling under the spare pillow, pressing his face to it and making himself comfortable there.

"What- What are you doing?"

"Hmmpinnn," was his pillow-muffled reply.

"_What_?"

Gabriel lifted his head a few inches off the pillow, "Sleeping," before burying his face back down again.

Jo stared at the back of his head for a moment. She considered telling him to go back to the couch which, now that she thought about it, was probably infinitely more comfortable than the bed anyway, but he was tired and she was tired and if she admitted it she did sort of feel better with him there.

She tried to go back to sleep but her brain wasn't making it easy. She kept going over the dream and when she closed her eyes Lucifer's face would appear like an afterimage. She didn't know how she knew it was Lucifer, something in her just knew with a certainty that almost scared her. The only thing that would distract her from that was thinking about the rest of the dream and how great it had been.

She tried to focus on that, on the way it had felt to cut through clouds and over mountains. How free and powerful it had made her feel. She wondered if she would ever have a dream like that again. She also wondered about something else but was a little uncomfortable voicing it.

Was it too personal? If she got into it would he know what her dream had been about? Would he know that she'd seen Lucifer? She didn't want that information getting back to him. She knew what a sore spot his brothers were for him, especially that particular one. But still the need to know nagged at her.

"Hey, Gabriel?" she whispered, almost half wishing that he would be in too deep a sleep to even hear her.

"Hmmeaahh?"

"Angels, real ones, they have wings…right?"

Eyes closed, he turned his head towards her, still half-asleep, and nodded against the pillow, "Yeah, some of 'em."

"Did you?"

"Mmm-hmm," he intoned sleepily. "Why?"

"Nothing," she said quickly, backpedaling from what she'd really wanted to ask. "Just wondering."

"Okay," he yawned, settling back into the pillow.

She lay there for a while, listening to his breathing slow and even out and the sound of the wind outside blowing through the big old weeping willow beside the cabin. She lay there and thought, and thought, and thought some more until she couldn't take it anymore.

"Gabriel?" she whispered again. "You still awake?"

"_Seriously_," he moaned, sleepy and aggravated.

"Never mind," she huffed and moved to roll away from him on her other side. "Forget it."

"Wait," he sighed, reaching out and grabbing at her shoulder to keep her in place. "Just… tell me."

Jo bit her lip and regarded him for a long moment, then bit the bullet.

"Do you miss it?" she asked, watching him frown and feeling the confusion settle over him. So she clarified. "Flying I mean. Do you miss it?"

She could tell by the look on his face and how he felt a little ambushed by the question that whatever he'd been expecting her to ask, that hadn't been it. She also knew that she'd probably just reminded him of something painful too, because mixed with the feeling of being caught off-guard there again was that big sea of hurt that threatened to drag her under.

"See," she huffed and rolled over, his hand slipping off her shoulder. "It was a stupid question."

Jo stared at the wall, feeling his eyes on the back of her neck, until finally the bed jostled and Gabriel rolled over to face his own wall. Letting out the massive breath she'd been holding in, she closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep. When that didn't work she forced herself to count to the highest number she could think of and then back down again to 1 and when she got there her mind was so exhausted that she would've had to fight just to remain conscious. She was just starting to drift off when she heard it, quiet and sincere and full of longing.

"Every day," said Gabriel softly. "I miss it every day."

And when she turned over, curling herself against his back, he let out a shuddering sigh. She almost wrapped her arms around him then but thought better of it, reasoning that it might somehow cross that unspoken line they'd become so good at ignoring. Instead she rested a hand against his shoulder and pressed her face to where his head lay against pillow, her lips just brushing across the soft skin of his neck, inhaling sugar and rain and sunlight.

His hand came up, curling around hers and then, finally, sleep came for them both.


	9. A Word From Your Author

**And now a word from your author...**

Firstly, I'm sorry. For a lot of things. I'm sorry I've been so neglectful. I'm sorry I've kept you all waiting. I'm sorry I've made you all think of this story as the proverbial cat in Schodinger's box, not knowing if it's dead or alive. Also, I'm sorry if you got faked-out by thinking this was a real update and not just some self-indulgent author's-note-cum-pity-party.

Okay, so, I know a lot of you (hopefully not all of you) have lost faith that this story will ever be updated, but I just wanted to drop in real quick and let you know, first and foremost, that no, the story **_has not been abandoned_**.

My pitiful excuse which does no one here any good is that Real Life (the evil Villain!) totally shanghaied my brain and destroyed my ability to write for a really long time.

When I started this story I was at a funny time in my life. I was pretty much in real-life Limbo right there along with Jo and Gabriel. I was stuck in post-grad program I knew was wrong for me, so I was miserable and had a lot of time on my hands to write. Then overnight I upended my life, moved to another country, and began the long and arduous process of finding a job (which was just another kind of Limbo, really). Then, job found, I had a lot of time on my hands still because I was bored with my boring, easy job. Good for writing, bad for real life things like fulfillment and bills and whatnot. But then they kept promoting me at work and my jobs got more and more challenging, my responsibilities more and more serious, leaving me little to no time to write. I've somehow become someone responsible for a lot of other people, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (like 7/11 I'm in a business that never sleeps). It's like I adopted a ridiculous, reality-television-show-worthy number of children that I now have to take care of, and solve problems for, and defend and praise and punish and do payroll for.

But, of course, Gabriel doesn't stay quiet for very long, even (especially) when he's just a voice in my head. So fear not faithful readers, I have begun to write again and a new chapter is forthcoming!

"Yeah, but WHEN!" you scream and stamp your feet and throw things at me through your computer screen (not very smart, by the way. Those things _can_ break, you know).

Well, that's a little difficult to say.

*Readers turn to leave, disgusted*

BUT WAIT! I _can_ promise soon. How soon? ... I dunno. But soon. I've got most of the next chapter written but it doesn't feel "done" yet and I don't want to give birth to some sickly stillborn chapter not work the pixels it's printed (coded?) on.

Hang in there, guys. I'm typing as fast as my brain will give me things worth typing.

PLEASE STANDBY

Thank you.


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